You're living in a mobile home, and your living room is...crowded. It looks dingy and dull, and you feel like your home isn't what it should be. It's time for a remodel! The good news is, you don't have to do an expensive remodel. Instead, you can use some of these Mobile Home Living Room Ideas to do anything from a few small, refreshing changes to a complete redo.
1) Pellet Stove
Heating a mobile home is vital if you live in a colder climate, and since you aren't sitting on the same foundation a typical house would be, your heating might not be as efficient. Since you're trying to conserve space in a reasonably small home, a pellet stove like the one in this mobile home makeover would be ideal. The pellets take up less space than wood, and the pellet stove is relatively small, as well. You can even store the pellets in storage benches in your living room like they did.
2) RV Furniture
Your home may not be an RV, but it's a small, moveable home, so a lot of the principles of RV decorating will apply. Since RV furniture is designed to stay put when the building is moving, and it's designed to be comfortable in a small space, it should be ideal for a mobile home, too. Try getting furniture pieces like these RV recliners from Amazon to outfit your living room with maximum comfort in the minimum amount of space possible.
3) Table Leaves
One way to have plenty of space in a small room is to get things that start off compact and fold out so that they take up little space most of the time, but you can fold them out when you need the room. We loved the coffee table in Bethany Barber's living room because it has leaves you can fold out when you have company, but most of the time, it takes up about as much room as a regular coffee table.
4) Blinds
If your room seems small and dingy, poor lighting is one of the main things that can cause that, besides the fact that the room is small. To make your living room seem bigger and brighter, you'll want to let in as much light as possible, but in a trailer park, this would be a serious privacy issue! One excellent way to keep your privacy while letting in light is to get blinds like these that you can leave down and turn to let in light while obstructing neighbors' views.
5) Rectangular Bookcase
The neat thing about using rectangular furnishings is that you're creating more space and making it look like you have more space than you have at the same time. The boxy shape means you're not wasting a room with odd shapes and decorative flourishes, and you can place it right up against other furniture without leaving a gap. Boxy shapes are also simpler and cleaner and create the illusion of a larger space. Since they're regular-shaped, you can use shelves like these to store books, decorations, or toy bins.
6) Breakfast Bar
If your living room and kitchen are right next to each other, we highly recommend a breakfast bar like the one in this mobile home. Instead of thinking that living in a mobile home is a limitation, think of all the things you can do when two rooms are close together or joined into one room like that. The breakfast bar will give you a place to eat, but also make it easy to store snacks and grab them from the living room without getting in the way of anybody in the kitchen.
7) Couch Sleeper
Folding furniture is ideal for a small room, and even more so for a temporary home of one that might move. If you're only living here for a few months or a year and you have a few people in the house, setting the living room up as an extra bedroom that folds into a living room during the daytime could be ideal. Otherwise, having the extra fold-out space is perfect for children's sleepovers or overnight guests when you don't have a spare bedroom. We'd suggest a couch sleeper like this if you're looking to replace the couch.
8) Frosted Glass Sticker
Privacy is hard to come by if you're living in a trailer park, so you probably keep the blinds or curtains drawn to keep people from peering in, but that makes your living room look dark and dingy. Instead of keeping the curtains drawn all the time, we'd recommend getting a privacy film like this one to cover your glass. This way, people can't see in your living room when the windows are open, so you can leave them open and fill the space with sunlight!
9) Doorways and Room Flow
Doorways are the main thing you'll need to plan a room around, because you don't want to block them or crowd them. Sometimes, it might seem like you can put a piece of furniture close to a doorway so that you can have a slightly longer couch or add an extra chair, but that can destroy the flow of a room. You can see in this video that adding an extra chair close to the doorway makes it look crowded and forces people coming in to weave around the chair. Sometimes, your home will feel bigger with less furniture.
10) Hanging Decor
Mobile homes don't have a large footprint, so you probably don't have much floor space in your living room. Remember that a room has three dimensions; you can put decorations and furniture on the walls and ceiling, as well as the floor. Ceiling decorations may seem odd since people rarely look at ceilings, but hanging decorations will take up more room on your ceiling than anywhere else. Make sure to put them in places they won't get in the way or get things like light fixtures since you already need them anyway. Just get decorative versions like these.
11) Home Office
Since you probably have limited space throughout your home, you might need to combine a couple rooms into one. Living room/dining room and living room/kitchen combinations are common, but if your kitchen is already separate, we'd suggest putting a table in your kitchen and using the living room as a home office. You can get things like this lightweight file cabinet and TV trays to turn an area into a mini home office since they don't take up much space.
12) Choose Flooring Wisely
If your room looks small, it could be that you have too much furniture and clutter, but of course, you want to make sure you have enough furniture for comfortable seating and storage. If you have the bare minimum number of furnishings and the room still looks and feels crowded, one way to create a more open impression is to get the right flooring. We found this article on making rooms look bigger with flooring to get you started.
13) TV Trays
It's hard to find a house with a separate living room, dining room, and kitchen, let alone a mobile home with these. Usually, people add a table to their living room or kitchen, but in a mobile home, that'll take up a lot of space you can't afford to lose. TV trays are a versatile way to save space since you can get a set like this that tucks into a corner when not in use. Then, when you need to eat, write, or use a laptop, it only takes a few seconds to set them up.
14) Cabinets
Shelves are good ways to store things, but when you're living in a small space, you might have things from one room stored in another. For instance, your children's toys are probably stored in the living room since the bedrooms aren't all that big. You also probably don't have a basement for storage. One way to keep things looking tidy despite the amount of stuff stored in the living room is to get cabinets like these so that the doors will hide anything you have stored in them.
15) Couch, Coffee Table, Centerpiece
There are three basic things that most living rooms have, and your mobile home living room is no different. First, you'll need a couch or seating. Then, a coffee table or table space is essential. Last, there will be some centerpiece, whether it's a pellet stove, TV, or large window. This article shows three different ways people have configured rooms with a couch, coffee table, and centerpiece, but you can use this as a base for your home. We also suggest getting tables and furniture with storage underneath since you won't have a basement for storage.
16) Lightweight Storage
The whole purpose of a mobile home is that you can move from one location to another without having to sell your old home and buy a new one. You can also design your living room to be easily movable so that your whole moving experience is less stressful. One way to do that is to get primarily lightweight furniture like this seagrass ottoman. You'll need a lot of storage since you won't have a basement, so you might as well get something light that'll be easy to move later.
17) Furniture With Storage
In a mobile home, you'll probably want every furniture piece to serve more than one function since you have limited room. For most furniture, that extra function should be storage to make up for the fact that you won't have a basement, and the living room is a central place to store a lot of things. On top of that, your children's toys and home office are probably going to be in here if you don't have unusually large bedrooms. Try getting pieces like this ottoman that are both seating and storage.
18) All One Color
The aesthetic will be important in this room since it's a small room, but you don't want it to look small. One way to trick the eye into thinking the room is bigger is to paint everything one color, preferably a light color. If you paint both the walls and the ceiling white, you'll make it hard to tell where the wall ends and the ceiling begins, thus making the ceiling seem higher. It'll also create a light, reflective surface to bring in more sunlight and make the room look bigger. You can read this article for more painting guidance.
19) Throw Rugs
There's a fair chance that you're using your living room as more than one room. Whether it's a home office and living room, living room and dining room, or even a living room and kitchen combination, you'll want to create visual separation. This means you need to do something to separate the living section of the room from the rest, and throw rugs like this one are one of the best ways to do that. Get a rug that's the right size for your living room, and you can put it right underneath the sofa and coffee table.
20) Open Look
While your options are limited by the size and layout of your living room, one of the key things you'll probably want to do is make the area look open. If you already have a large doorway like the one in Brooke Riley's room reveal, you're a step ahead, and you'll want to leave that doorway open enough that it helps make the room feel larger. That doesn't mean you can't put things there, of course, but we suggest making sure it stays wider than a typical doorway. The teal and light, beachy colors also help create an open look.
21) Overlap when Possible
Every piece of furniture has some space it takes up next to it. For instance, you'll need to leave a couple feet of free space in front of a chair or sofa, and at least one side of a table needs to be free so that you can stand in front of it. In a small room, this can become an art as you overlap pieces to the greatest extent possible. As you furnish a space or rearrange furniture, think about how much space you really need around it and create overlap as these designers did in their video.
22) Plan Your Layout
Planning ahead is probably the most critical part of designing a layout or rearranging a mobile home living room. Think about which pieces you need to fit and start with the larger pieces, then work your way towards optional pieces and smaller ones. Take advantage of any odd nooks and crevices instead of trying to ignore them, and stay focused on what you're likely to be doing in this room. We found some excellent advice on the subject here.
23) Decorative Features
Since you don't have a lot of space, you probably don't want to waste it with too many decorations that can make it look cluttered, but you do want to decorate to keep the room from looking generic. After all, there are probably a thousand people with the same mobile home layout as yours, so you want to make your mark on this space! Try turning everything you can into a decoration by getting decorative light fixtures, light switches, and even doorknobs. You can even get decorative floor registers like these ones from Amazon. You can decorate anything!
24) Bar Cart
If you have a kitchen/living room combo, we suggest taking advantage of it! Instead of treating it as the byproduct of having a tiny home, think of it as the luxury of having your kitchen close by when you're in the living room. We loved the idea of getting a rolling bar cart like this so that you can fill it up with drinks, snacks, or even dinner if you don't have a dining table. Then, just roll it out into the adjacent living room and snack while you watch TV, or serve your dinner right from it.
25) Vertical Paneling
Making the room larger isn't an option if you want it to stay mobile, so instead, you'll have to settle for making it look larger. One trick for this is to get vertical wall paneling. Painted vertical paneling will draw your eye up and make the room look taller and more open, and if you choose a lighter paint color, it'll reflect sunlight to brighten the room. A brighter room also tends to look bigger, so light colors will be a good idea. We suggest wider paneling, but you can learn all about paneling choices and see different effects here.
26) Skylight
More light makes a room feel brighter, happier, and more open. If you live in a trailer park, you probably avoid leaving the windows open because there are too many neighbors nearby and you value privacy, but this leads to a dark and claustrophobic living room. If you're not comfortable opening the blinds, a skylight will let in light, and since the window will be too high up for anybody to look through, you'll have plenty of privacy and sunlight!
27) Light Colors and Nature
Light colors are one of the essentials to living in a small space, because they reflect light and make a room feel more open and therefore larger. To create a light and airy look, you can repaint with light colors, then add decorations like flowers and bits of nature as Lindsey Domer does in this video. You can see how the flowers and light colors create a happy and airy look that makes a mobile home feel less like a cookie-cutter house. So many mobile homes are sterile or cluttered, but you can make yours a home!
28) LED Strip Lights
If you've never done work on a mobile home, or if you're renting, you might not want to do any electrical installation, but if you don't like to leave the windows open, you need more light. Better lighting will keep your room from looking crowded and dingy, so it may be a good idea to look for easy-to-install lights. The easiest ones to install are LED strip lights like these from Amazon. You can plug them in and place them around the edges of a room like Christmas lights, but they'll add some extra light during the day.
29) Lap Desk
Living in a mobile home, or any small home, often means combining two rooms into one to save space. A lot of people living in a mobile home will use their living room for almost everything, and one thing you might find yourself struggling to get is office space. If you work on your laptop regularly, do homework online, or just need to do online banking every so often, you need a place to work. TV trays can work, but they're designed to be a comfortable height for eating, not working, so a lap desk like this may be better.
30) Create a Focal Point
Every room should have a focal point, but it becomes even more important in a small mobile home room. Mobile homes are very similar to each other, and you'll need to make sure yours stands out by creating a unique focal point that fits your needs, whether that's a TV, window, or decoration. We found you a guide on making a living room focal point using glass dividers for an unusual look that few others will have.
31) Room Divider
In a small home, and in a mobile home, in particular, it's typical for two rooms to be combined into one. For example, a living room and kitchen won't have a wall separating them. If you want to feel more like you're in a standard home instead of a mobile one, adding room dividers can separate those rooms and make it feel like each room is a separate space. You can use portable dividers like these or build permanent ones.
What are some of the main features, good and bad, in your living room? Everyone wants something different from their mobile home, and we'd like to hear what you're looking for. Please let us know in the comments below!
