10 Dark green living room ideas
Updated: Mar 19
Dark green living room ideas to create a stylish sanctuary
According to Pinterest trends reports, searches for dark green living room ideas have gone up a few hundred percent recently, and a quick scroll on social media will tell you all you need to know about why… dark green living rooms are in vogue and in your face this winter. Dark green living rooms are a trend I can get on board with as green is one of my faves - unpopular opinion, green is a neutral for me, so in its lighter shades, it doesn’t even count as colour in my interior schemes!
Bringing the outdoors in is not a new idea, but it’s certainly a home interiors trend that has been well and truly adopted into everyday life since we all spent the pandemic and lockdowns appreciating any outdoor space we were lucky enough to have.
How to create a dark green living room of dreams
Because everyone has a different budget, interior style, home setting etc I’m going to cover a variety of ways to embrace the dark green living room trend, from a few dark green accents in a living room to a full colour-drench, hopeful there’ll be something that appeals to you along the way. Let’s get started…
1. Invest in a dark green sofa
Green sofas are everywhere at the moment and on one particular weekend recently you couldn’t scroll on Instagram without coming across an influencer opening their green sofa they had been been sent as part of a sofa retailer’s advertising campaign. The good news is that the rise in popularity of green sofas has meant a much wider variety of greens is available to buy now. There is also a wider variety of shapes, styles and, frankly, quality, which is great news if you want a quick, cost-effective sofa available immediately, delivered to your home for under £440 (see above image with Daals sofa, which exactly fits that brief).
Buying a green sofa allows you to embrace the dark green living room trend without fully submerging yourself and your room in green paint - ideal if your lighting and position don’t necessarily work with that scenario or you just don’t fancy a DIY room makeover. A well-styled, attractive sofa can bring a room to life, so be sure to brush up on your sofa styling tips. Don’t panic if a new sofa is out of your price range, as I’ve got lots of less expensive ways to embrace this trend coming up - for now, have a look at my top tips for refreshing a tired sofa instead and perhaps buy a green throw!
2. Colour drench your dark green living room
Colour drenching means covering the room from top to bottom in the same paint colour, this can mean the ceiling, woodwork, walls, and radiators are all painted in the same shade (albeit in different types of paint as you can’t slap standard matt emulsion on your rads and woodwork and expect it to stay put for all that long!). The above image shows a colour-drenched room styled with a striking green marble column table lamp from Lime Lace.
The transformative powers of paint are well documented, and colour drenching is a great tool for DIYers to use to transform their rooms entirely without spending a fortune. You can save even more money on a painting project by buying your paint from my favourites, the Decorating Centre Online which offers the best colour-matching service I’ve ever tried. In the past, I’ve tried the Homebase colour matching and the Valspar service (in-store at B&Q) and they’ve both been terrible, the shade is nothing like that from the colour card of the expensive paint brand you really wanted. But the DCO’s colour matching is always spot on.
Below are some dark green paint shade suggestions for your living room colour drench projects, click the individual images to visit the F&B website and check them out.
3. Install some dark green wall panelling
I love wall panelling. Over the past few years, I’ve added panelling to almost every wall, then, in some cases, taken it off again and put another type up (see, I told you - obsessed!). Whilst I’m not promoting doing the Hokey-Cokey with your wall panelling in quite the same way, I recommend using it as a way to add depth and character to your room and embrace the dark green living room trend after a lick of paint, too. There are lots of types of wall panelling (I’ve written a step-by-step for the beadboard tongue & groove method), and you can opt to buy the raw materials and make it from scratch, or these days, there are convenient kits that contain everything you need that you can buy from DIY stores.
Winter is such a great time to consider Dark green living room ideas because dark green is such a cosy and comforting colour due to its ties to nature and its warmth - perfect during a cost-of-living crisis when the heating in your home is likely to be on less than you might ideally like. As an aside, if this last point is of interest, I wrote a whole other piece about tips for keeping warm without the heating on this winter. 4. Add dark green soft furnishings
Adding dark green soft furnishings is a non-committal way of adopting some dark green living room ideas. This strategy is ideal if you live in rented accommodation and need some rental-friendly home styling ideas.
Cushions (like the fern-patterned beauty shown by JJ Textile), blankets, sofa throws, chair covers, curtains and blinds are all great ways to add some dark green to your living room. A top home styling tip is to combine a variety of shades of dark green and introduce a pattern to two, as this will all add depth and interest to the overall look.
5. Buy a dark green living room rug
Rugs are a great way to add some impact to a room with little effort and no DIY if that’s not your (tool)bag! You can get massive rugs that fill the floor space and create a welcoming and cosy living room like the B&Q rug shown. If you live in an open-plan home then a giant rug is a great way of defining/zoning the living room space.
This idea is another rental-friendly option, and as the flooring in rentals can range from ‘not to your taste’ to ‘completely hideous!’ a large rug could be just the ticket.
Look out for sales and discount codes on rugs, as they can be quite an investment, especially the large ones. Ikea has a great range of large rugs that are good value and you can always buy pre-loved rugs on places like Facebook Marketplace and eBay.
Another money-saving decor tip is to buy a large offcut of carpet and use it as a rug. You can get the edges sewn (whipped) professionally or there are carpet binding strips available from places like Amazon for an even more cost-effective DIY solution.
6. Add some dark green accents and accessories
Adding accents to a room just means inserting some small dark green touches rather than painting a whole wall. An accent could be as simple as adding some green candle sticks on your mantlepiece or green vases on your shelves, or you could get involved with some DIY and paint the skirting and architrave of the room dark green. Either way, the outcome is a nod to the dark green living room trend without much time or money invested. You might find you love the accents so much that you feel compelled to go bolder and commit to a whole wall or a complete colour drench, but that’s the great thing about experimenting with your home decor - it’s totally up to you and can be put back to ‘normal’ easily too.
7. Dark green living room feature wall
Eek, I feel like a rebel even mentioning the notion of a feature wall as they are very much frowned upon by trendy interior designers these days. Once the go-to way to add a focal point, the much-maligned feature wall is now the epitome of naffness in some circles. I’m putting it out there as an option for you to consider and because there are ways to incorporate the idea of a feature wall without sticking to the cliched changing rooms style feature walls, for example, you could make a dark green cosy nook in a living room alcove and paint just that space in dark green, therefore zoning it as a space in its own right.
8. Invest in dark green artwork
Dark green artwork is always a good idea. Much like the blue artwork we looked at yesterday as part of the blue Christmas trend, choosing artwork that you really connect with means it will stand the test of time and won’t just work while you are knee-deep in an interior trend.
9. Decorate with dark green wallpaper
It would be remiss of me not to mention dark-green wallpaper in a list of dark green living room ideas for two reasons: firstly, wallpaper is hot right now and secondly, it’s such a great way of adding colour and pattern to a room. Wallpaper is super versatile, too so you don’t need to go all out and cover every surface to make a style statement; you could introduce wallpaper in panelled sections on the wall or add to the space behind some shelves for a 1-hour shelf update
10. Opt for dark green living room furniture
Dark green furniture is another way to make a style statement. They could be painted upcycled projects or green furniture bought new (like the Dunelm coffee table shown or preloved. I painted our IKEA hack BILLY built-ins dark green a while ago and it made a brilliant focal point for the room. You can read more over on my IKEA hacks page where there are lots of details about projects to transform the basic IKEA flatpacks into bespoke-looking furniture.
