The Property Brothers’ Best Living Room Design Ideas From ‘Forever Home’
With pro-level layout tweaks, fresh furnishings and palettes that pop, Drew and Jonathan Scott have assembled the perfect toolkit for making any living room feel new again.

Photo By: Dennys Ilic
Photo By: Dennys Ilic Photography
Photo By: Artist
Photo By: Dennys Ilic
Photo By: Dennys Ilic Photography
Photo By: BOOKSTRUCKER, BOOKSTRUCKER, BOOKSTRUCKER
Photo By: Dennys Ilic Photography
Photo By: BOOKSTRUCKER, BOOKSTRUCKER, BOOKSTRUCKER
Photo By: BOOKSTRUCKER, BOOKSTRUCKER, BOOKSTRUCKER
Photo By: BOOKSTRUCKER, BOOKSTRUCKER, BOOKSTRUCKER
Photo By: BOOKSTRUCKER, BOOKSTRUCKER, BOOKSTRUCKER
Photo By: BOOKSTRUCKER, BOOKSTRUCKER, BOOKSTRUCKER
Photo By: BOOKSTRUCKER, BOOKSTRUCKER, BOOKSTRUCKER
Photo By: Dennys Ilic Photography, Dennys Ilic Photography, Dennys Ilic Photography
Photo By: Dennys Ilic Photography, Dennys Ilic Photography, Dennys Ilic Photography
Photo By: Dennys Ilic Photography, Dennys Ilic Photography, Dennys Ilic Photography
Photo By: Dennys Ilic Photography
Photo By: Dennys Ilic Photography, Dennys Ilic Photography, Dennys Ilic Photography
Fall in Love With Your Living Room (Again)
On Property Brothers: Forever Home, Jonathan and Drew Scott aren’t interested in matchmaking and meet-cutes. The homeowners they’re helping are already all in — they just don’t feel the sparks that once flew in their spaces. These living room revamps are all about rekindling those sparks; you might say they’re the interior-design version of relationship therapy. Take notes on your favorite tricks, and take them home to make your heart go pitter-pat.
see more: Property Brothers: Forever Home
Use Shelving Units in Lieu of Built-Ins
Drew and Jonathan created storage opportunities in this split-level home by flanking the vintage fireplace with a pair of industrial-inflected units that display and conceal without adding visual weight. As an alternative to custom cabinetry around the hearth, they’re a budget-minded homeowner’s dream.
see more: 12 Best Bookcases for Every Budget and Style
Combine Two Coffee Tables
A massive sectional like this one would swallow a standard coffee table whole. In turn, pairing it with a single, oversized piece that matched its scale, would limit the room’s versatility. That’s where these rich wood and oxidized-iron beauties come in: Against one another, they form a square surface large enough to accommodate a low-key meal. Split and rearranged elsewhere, they can also function as occasional tables.
see more: 20 Living Room Coffee Table Looks We Love
Divide the Room With a Sectional Chaise
By configuring a sofa, two center sections and an armless chaise to create the world’s coziest U, the Scotts created a living room that feels distinct but not closed off from the kitchen beside it. A thoughtful color story supports that move: deep indigo that carries through the sectional’s throws, the area rug and the Roman shades pulls the space together.
see more: 20 Living Room Design Ideas for the Gray Sectional Owner
Add a Neutral Wall Treatment
When a look-at-me feature wall isn’t quite right, a trompe l’oeil option — like this wallpaper, which mimics the look of reclaimed barnwood without the hassle of installation — adds gorgeously low-key texture. This room has a second below-the-radar feature: The subtle herringbone pattern on the floor was laid with ultra-durable wood-grained porcelain tile.
see more: The Best Places to Buy Wallpaper Online
Choose Smaller, Round Coffee Tables
The kid-friendly, Scandinavian-inspired tables before this living room’s grand fireplace and beside the sofa counterbalance the right angles and straight lines that surround them. An oversized piece like a chest might be superior for stashing toys, but these leggy little fellows are versatile and far easier on the eyes.
see more: The Best Coffee Tables Under $300
Warm Up With Metallic Gold and Rust-Orange Textiles
A gleaming gold arc lamp and a trio of pendants above the kitchen island give this open-plan living area an undertone of richness, while autumnal textiles in complementary tones add plush comfort. Neutral spaces like this one can easily feel a bit cold. To guide one into more comforting territory, imagine how light might transform your room at golden hour, just before dusk, and then echo those last rays of the day in your materials.
see more: How to Cozy Up Your Home With Fall Colors
Define Spaces With Area Rugs
With vaulted ceilings and plenty of square footage, this open-plan home is wonderfully airy. Thanks to visual cues from the runner at the front door and beneath the dining room table and sectional, its “rooms” don’t get lost.
see more: Area Rugs 101
Give Built-Ins Glass Doors
Jonathan and Drew installed devilishly clever built-in storage that displays delicate collections where exploring hands can’t disturb them, color-blocks beautifully against the creamy floor-to-ceiling fireplace surround and offers additional hidden compartments at ground level. An arrangement like this one is perfect for items that are easy on the eyes but don’t need to (or shouldn’t) be accessed all the time.
see more: 20 Beautiful Built-Ins
Or, Focus Gallery Lights on Built-Ins
Give your built-ins a different type of shine. The wall-mounted fixtures Drew and Jonathan installed to illuminate the shelving on either side of the fireplace in this living room highlight the pieces they display and complement a contemporary chandelier in the dining area beyond it. Speaking of next-level lighting moves …
see more: 12 Lighting Trends We Love Right Now
Pair Mismatched Sofas
Mirror-image velvet or leather sofas would work just fine here, but using just one of each gives this room a feel of playful sophistication. Since both of the sofas’ tones carry through the fabulous vintage rug beneath them, their contrast feels intentional rather than haphazard.
see more: How to Buy a Couch
Layer Lighting
… Don’t worry about going overboard with light sources in your living room; it’s virtually impossible. As the Scotts’ design in this space demonstrates, a sleek, midcentury-inspired flush-mount globe + complementary wall-mounted sconces + recessed lighting add up to a warm, textured atmosphere that’s simple to customize for various occasions.
see more: 20 Living Room Lighting Design Ideas
Make the Music Room a Feature Wall
The Scott brothers incorporated their clients’ personalities by relocating their musical instruments to a tastefully-papered wall in the living room. Now, they’re a one-of-a-kind feature (and much easier to play than they would be tucked into a home office). A move like this one is what makes a living space reflect the people who live in it. When aiming for your own version of this look, ask yourself how well-loved functional objects can become part of your visual story.
see more: 8 Tips for Making Beautiful Vignettes
Choose Rearrangeable Seating
These lighter-than-air armchairs and ottomans are perfect for the casual, coastal living room Jonathan and Drew created here. Their pale fabric and washed-out wood suit the space’s refined-beachcomber vibe, and the fact that they’re easy to move on a whim suits last-minute get-togethers of all kinds.
see more: How to Arrange Your Living Room Furniture
Add Organic Warmth With a Live-Edge Coffee Table
The funky, knobby table the Scotts chose as the centerpiece for this living room is doing a lot of work for one humble piece: It counterbalances the space’s crisp lines with wild curves, pulls golden notes out of the window treatments and whitewashed fireplace bricks, and offers a spot to perch drinks and books that won’t clip ankles or endanger little visitors with sharp edges and corners.
Highlight a Fireplace With Shiplap
With apologies to hand-stacked hearths with river rocks sourced from the property and artful arrangements of well-weathered brick, it’s hard to argue with shiplap’s instant visual impact and relative ease of installation. Jonathan and Drew added even more appeal to this living room’s feature wall by accenting it asymmetrically: a big, bold canvas hangs to its right, and floating shelves and a cabinet offer storage on its left.
see more: 15 Unexpected Shiplap Ideas
Add a Ceiling Medallion
The already-excellent, flush-mount fixture Jonathan and Drew chose for this living room becomes downright spectacular when its light filters across a medallion’s molding. Both architectural salvage and new pieces can make fixtures pop, and they’re an inexpensive way to add or supplement trim in a room that’s in need of a finishing touch.
Draw the Eye to Architecture With a Feature Wall
This living room is a master class in clever treatments. The stunning ombré — a look you can DIY or achieve with mural-style wallpaper, as the Scotts did here — draws attention to the space’s handsome vaulted ceiling. In turn, the gallery-style arrangement on the wall to its right brings the room’s massive proportions down to a cozier scale and combines both two- and three-dimensional pieces.
see more: DIY Accent Walls We Love
Unify With Geometry
Want a sneaky theme that’ll pull your living room together without drawing attention to itself? Make like Jonathan and Drew and deploy a single shape — as they did here with circles — throughout the space. An arcing floor lamp with a drum shade, a round mounted mirror, an ottoman tray and a trio of baskets ensure each part of this home harmonizes with the others.
Go Big With Custom Shelving
This room’s ultra-functional showstopper: wall-spanning built-ins that flank the fireplace, create a mantel, frame family mementos and offer hidden storage for kid stuff. The Scotts added dimensionality and even more visual impact to this installation by backing it with wood, a move that gives the room a cozier feel.
see more: 10 Interiors That Make the Case for Built-In Shelving
Layer Area Rugs
The next time you find a rug that’d be perfect for your space if it was just a bit bigger, thank your lucky stars — and spread it out on top of a larger, textural piece, as Jonathan and Drew did in this stylish living room. This on-trend trick reduces wear on more delicate pieces, lowers the cost of covering a large area and adds visual interest to an element of your space that can often feel underwhelming.
see more: This Clever Design Hack Creates an Expensive Rug Look for Way Less Money