We’ve partnered with IKEA for this sponsored post full of IKEA room ideas that made our playroom more functional! Although this post was compensated, all experiences and opinions are my own.
IKEA Room Ideas for More Functional Family Spaces
The new year seems to bring a focus on getting more organized in all parts of our lives. I think we all just feel like it’s the perfect time for a fresh start.
If your family is like our family, we also find ourselves facing a house full of new things. The kids’ birthdays are in November and December, so combined with Christmas and we end up with a lot of new toys and books.
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My goal is to purge some of the toys and books in our playroom (which is really like a second smaller living room for our whole family) before the gifts start coming in. It doesn’t always happen which always left me pondering how to get things feeling organized.
If you’re planning to revamp a small room to make it more functional this year, we’ve got seven things to focus on to make it easy!
- IKEA Living Room Ideas Inspiration
- Choose Modern Living Room Colors
- IKEA Living Room Furniture
- Gain Storage with Height
- Drawers for Books, Games & DVDs
- Room Ideas for Baskets
- Small Family Room Furniture Arrangement
Adding Style & Function to Our Room
Let me show you what I was working with before I share the ways that IKEA living room ideas helped me finally tackle organization!
Yep, at some point during the six years we’ve lived in our house, I decided that it would be great to paint the playroom a bright color. I don’t even remember exactly why we chose the orange except that it worked with a big brown sectional couch that we had in the room.
While we call it our playroom, Grambo and I were the ones spending a lot of time in the room, using it as a TV room of sorts. When we weren’t in there, Justin and the kids would often be in there playing video games. So it had become a second living room space for us and I was craving some organization and a more put together feeling.
It’s what I want for our entire house so I’m tackling it one room at a time. Thanks to IKEA room ideas, our small living room area has gone from a space that felt barely put together to the room that everyone wants to spend time in.
Find Inspiration for IKEA Room Ideas
Grambo and I have decorated a lot of rooms in the past 15 years or so. I blame all the home decorating TV shows for giving us the bug!
While our goal for our game room was to improve functionality and organization, when it comes to making over a room, we’ve found that it’s much easier when you have a decor item to inspire you. It can help guide all of your decisions about the room.
If you’ve ever visited an IKEA store, those IKEA room ideas they have set up are amazing for inspiration! You can find all sorts of inspiration but you might find yourself wanting to work on every room of your house!
If you’re working with limited space like a small living room or an apartment, having a piece that inspires your design and the rest of the decor makes it easier to make decisions because you have something to focus on.
With inspiration and focus for elements like colors and the general feel, you can focus on finding functional pieces that work together.
Choose Modern Living Room Colors
Functionality and organization was our focus in the playroom, but we also knew we wanted a modern feel with grey and teal colors. There were a few things in the room that we couldn’t take out — our two televisions and our new grey loveseat and ottoman.
So the color grey was part of the inspiration for the room. It’s what helped me make color decisions for our IKEA furniture. The modern feel we knew we wanted helped us focus on certain styles of IKEA small living room ideas to use in our space.
Grey living room ideas are almost limitless. You can opt for a clean, modern feel like we did by incorporating the whites with pops of color. Or you can combine gray with softer colors like dusty rose, mint green, and eggshell blue to get a completely different feel.
The great thing about IKEA furniture is that there are pieces for almost every decorating vibe you could want! That’s what I love about all of these IKEA room ideas — they can be adapted to almost any style or look that you want to achieve!
IKEA Living Room Furniture with Clean Lines
Once we knew the general vibe we wanted for the room, it was time to focus on organization and function. IKEA provided all of our new furniture pieces for our playroom makeover.
We already owned a KALLAX Shelf unit in birch that we bought at least 12 or 13 years ago, I think. It’s moved everywhere with us and currently helps keep our toys organized in the closet space of the extra bedroom we’ve turned into a second living room space.
The clean lines of KALLAX was the feel I wanted to continue throughout the room, but I also knew I wanted the white furniture to work with our new grey wall color and keep the furniture feeling fresh and clean and bright.
(If you have a messy storage area like our closet, I’ve got an IKEA solution for that too! It’s all about curtains!)
That led me to the BRIMNES series at IKEA. It has clean lines, large drawers, and adjustable shelves which make the organization possibilities perfect for our busy family life.
Gain Storage with Height with IKEA Room Ideas
One of the best things we’ve learned to do in smaller spaces in our home is to use height to create more usable storage space. In our playroom, we did that with help from the BRIMNES bookcase.
It has two drawers and adjustable shelves that give us an incredible amount of storage to work with.
The BRIMNES bookcase must be secured to the wall with the wall anchoring device that comes with the furniture.
When it comes to family spaces like living rooms, game rooms, playrooms, and bedrooms, safety is number one. Large pieces of furniture that are not secured pose a risk to the safety of our kids so be sure to anchor any furniture that could be climbed on and pulled over.
Ours is secured to the wall and has given us a great place to organize books and board games!
Another quick idea for using height for more functional space is to hang shelves or picture ledges! The MOSSLANDA picture ledges from IKEA are my favorite because they have the clean lines I love and they’re easy to install!
Small Living Room Ideas for Books, Games & DVDs
As soon as I had kids, I figured out something about organization and storage that didn’t work well for me — cabinets. We have plenty of cabinets with shelves around our house. We have them in our kitchen, living room, and bathrooms. They’re all kind of a mess and I’m okay with sharing that.
The one place that I love a good shelf is a bookshelf. I think it’s the teacher in me, but I love having some of our favorite books displayed on a bookshelf. As long as I can keep them looking organized, I always want to have books be a visible part of our home.
When it comes to modern living room ideas, I think organization is key to getting that vibe. When you live with a family of five under one roof, clutter just seems to be part of life. But two things have made it easier for me to get things organized — drawers and baskets!
I do much better with cabinets that have drawers than ones that have doors and shelves. This is why I opted for the BRIMNES TV unit. It has large drawers that make it so easy to organize. Plus it also has spaces in the back to lead all of the cords and cables through to hide them from view. It helps give that clean look that I was craving in this space.
It’s absolutely perfect for organizing all of our extra books, video games, and movies!
We also opted for the BRIMNES 3-drawer chest over a different cabinet to give us more drawer space. I’m thrilled to have some drawers still empty now that the room is complete. It’s nice to finally have some extra space in this room!
IKEA Living Room Ideas for Baskets
My other secret to getting more organized in all of the spaces of our home is baskets! Baskets and boxes are a great way to organize on shelves and even in drawers.
We use a lot of them in our KALLAX unit and I also added some baskets I had that brought in some pops of the color I’d decided on when we started planning our revamp of the room.
Small Family Room Furniture Arrangement
I think it’s important to find balance when you’re working in any room. IKEA room ideas helped me find a balance of functionality and appearance while also working to balance out the clean, modern lines I wanted so the room felt welcoming.
When you’re choosing new furniture for your space, especially smaller spaces, you want to make sure that your pieces aren’t making your room feel smaller. Based on the windows and the doorways in our small living room, we had two options for how to place our loveseat. We made a decision and then built our furniture around that.
My goal was to have an open feel so placing the furniture along the walls went a long way to making the room feel spacious. The clean, straight lines of the BRIMES series are balanced out by our loveseat, our large grey bean bag chair, a gorgeous HAMPEN area rug, and a set of MERETE curtains that hide the great organization we get in the closet space from the KALLAX unit.
Those curtains are the solution to our closet clutter! I do my best to keep it organized, but the kids have their own way of organizing! So curtains keep it all hidden and keep the room looking great!
With help from IKEA room ideas, some new furniture pieces, and a few textiles, we’ve turned our playroom into the second living room we knew it could be. It now works for our entire family from the preschooler to the grandmother! I have to admit that even the dogs seem to spend more time in the room now!
It’s not only a welcoming space now, it’s organized and has a place for everything. That will help us keep it organized! The IKEA small living room design ideas we’ve incorporated into the space have given our playroom a completely different look and feel that has me feeling like we have a fresh start!
Here’s to more time spent together! More family game nights, more family movie nights, and lots of time reading together!
For more inspiration, check out our ideas for around the house.
I am a Brand Ambassadör for IKEA U.S. This is a sponsored post.
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