How to Decorate with a Navy Blue Couch – 16 Ideas
That big, beautiful blue couch of yours should be the highlight of your living room. After all, the sofa is usually what people notice first when they enter your living space. But you’ll want to take care when decorating around a blue sofa to be sure you’re playing it up as best as you can.
Luckily, a blue couch is versatile. With just a few tips in mind, you can dress up your blue couch in a colorful bohemian, comfy cottage, chic and modern, or classic contemporary look – and there’s even more room for variety from there. Here’s a list of 16 ideas to help you decorate with a blue couch.
Bring Out the Best in Your Couch
If you are unsure how to decorate with a blue couch, don’t despair. Everything you need is contained in the couch itself. A foolproof way to create a stunning room is to take different aspects of your sofa and use them as the basis for the rest of the room.
Find matching furniture that has the same legs or wood color as the couch. Pair it with an accent pillow that has the same grey undertone. Add blocky art prints that match the style and shape of your sofa. As long as you have repetition of a few different elements, even seemingly different pieces will start to come together quickly.
Contrast with Sunny Yellow
Blue is calming, centering and soothing. It’s a cool color, so it’s no surprise it brings an air of relaxation to your living room – which is why pairing it with vibrant, sunny yellow is such a fresh idea.
The warm and upbeat nature of bright yellow adds a cheery contrast to your cool blue sofa, especially if your seat is a darker shade of blue. With this color combination, your room will have the best of both worlds, fostering an environment that is sweet, soft, and comfortable.
Use Accents that Match the Couch
When decorating around a blue sofa, it’s a great idea to hold onto the color of your couch and use accents that mimic it. Your space will have better aesthetic unity if the same shade of blue shows up in the carpet, on a colorful throw pillow, or in the art on the walls. You can even mimic in reverse and have these accent details show up on your couch in the form of throw pillows or blankets
Go Dark with a Navy Couch
Decorating around a navy blue sofa in a chic, contemporary way is simple: go dark. Rich, even chocolatey shades of wood will play up your richly hued navy couch. Other dark accents like metal are a great thing to look for in surrounding furniture as well.
Add just a hint of dynamism with wooden furniture that has the slightest orange undertone. Play up the contrast even more with a couple of beige accents to keep everything soft, yet exciting.
Embrace Awkward Elements
When you first bring home any distinctive item, it’s easy to go from excitement to despair as you think, “How am I going to match this?”
But instead of trying to fit your unique item into an existing space, consider an overhaul and shift everything around to match that item. Your L-shaped sofa, for example, becomes the corner piece of a newly reconfigured living room nook. Play up the shape or any other distinctive feature you have and let it sing.
Play up the Drama
If you’ve brought home an electric blue beauty, you don’t want to hide it with the wrong décor. Play up the dazzling hue by keeping a tasteful sense of drama in your living room. Somber neutrals, like soft greys, charcoal, and black are a great idea.
If you need to go light, use small accents of grey-tinted beige, silver, or light wood. Let your darks be heavy, but keep a few light accents around to liven things up.
Or Keep it Soft
On the other hand, sometimes it’s a good idea to play up the gentler side of blue instead. If your sofa is light blue or just screams “soft and cozy” then it may be best to just embrace it. Surround your seat with its like-minded friends. Opt for pastels, light neutrals like white or beige, light to medium wood colors, and even cozy wicker pieces.
Don’t Forget the Throw Pillows
Although it may seem obvious, you don’t want to forget about what’s on the couch when you’re decorating around it. Accent, or throw, pillows can transform the tone of your sofa – and the rest of the living room – so they’re a great way to tie the couch to the rest of the room, or vice versa.
Look for pillows that mimic features in other furniture or decorations in your living room. Consider color, texture, style, and even shape. Especially if your couch is the pop of color in the space, your throw pillows can make or break the whole look – ideally by helping your couch blend in with the rest of the room.
Stimulate with a Geometric Look
Blues are often used to send a particular message: relax. But that doesn’t mean your soothing navy blue couch can only be used to create soft and cozy spaces. Decorating around a navy blue sofa, or any blue sofa, isn’t limited to quintessential cottage-perfect vibes.
Contrast the softness of your blue sofa with a stimulating geometric look. Add geometric prints, wallpaper, or other accents to furniture designed with distinctive blocky or symmetrical shapes. The sharp geometric look will be quieted by your gentle blue couch for a provocative, yet slightly toned down, feel. There’s no reason your blue couch can’t be exciting.
Embrace Texture
Texture is an important aspect of design, yet we always seem to forget about it until we eye a fuzzy pillow in the home décor aisle. But when deciding how to decorate with a blue couch front and center in your living room, you don’t want to overlook the possibilities of texture.
Mix snuggly, fuzzy textures with smooth or hard textures. Maybe that means adding some softness to your leather couch, or maybe opting for a flatter, smoother carpet to contrast with a velvet sofa. Even if you don’t go for a large contrast, opting for different, but similar, textures can still add variety to your space, perfect for livening up even the simplest of decor.
Warm the Space Up
Medium, bright blues will always make friends with medium, bright reds. Both hues are stimulating yet soothing, while also complementing each other. Bright red is an energetic color that adds excitement and vibrancy to your living space, while the cool blue of your sofa tempers the effect, making it more comfortable.
Embrace some red in your space to liven and warm up the space and let your blue couch shine greater by contrast.
Don’t Forget the Coffee Table
Although you don’t want to overlook any piece of furniture, the walls, or your décor, it’s a good idea to pay extra attention to anything that will be closest to your sofa, like a coffee table. Your sofa and coffee table will be taken in together, so make sure they match and bring out the best in each other, by contrast or by complement.
Don’t Overlook the Backdrop
When you’re busy choosing pieces that work with your blue couch, don’t forget what’s going on behind the scenes – on your walls, that is. Consider painting them a soft pastel that will bring out your dark or navy couch, or brighten things up with curtains or wallpaper accents.
Your walls can help set the tone any way you like; just be sure to keep them in mind when you’re building your room.
Add White For a Country Coastal Feel
Navy and white are a classic coastal combination, but there is still plenty of room for variety in the seaside category. For a more traditional “country” feel, be sure to play up the lighter side in your décor.
Embrace eggshell white and beige throughout the room – as if everything just got a fresh coat of whitewash – and keep the navy to a noticeable minimum. Add just the slightest hint of darker colors, like a black or dark wood frame, to bring out the lighter colors and your space will look just like Grandma’s – with a little upgrade, of course.
Black, White and Navy
Of course, for a more classic, contemporary coastal look, the same tips as always apply. Opt for stronger, uninterrupted fields of navy and white.
Don’t be afraid to embrace charcoal or other dark neutrals as well; modern design especially welcomes the sophistication that these darker elements bring. Black, white and navy are a great way to have a modern, classy seafaring look built around your blue couch.
Pick a Few Pieces to Build Around
When decorating around a blue couch, don’t be afraid to build around another piece or two at the same time. Although it’s possible to overdo it, you can easily create a dynamic, colorful look by embracing a few different pieces or colors.
If you already have a couch and carpet you love, for example, match the rest of the space to both with repeating colors, shapes, design motifs, and style. As long as everything flows around the space and the overall feel of the pieces are similar, you can quickly create a colorful, but well-matched room in no time.
Final Thoughts
If you were excited to bring that blue couch home, don’t let that energy fade with indecision. Decorating around a blue sofa isn’t as frustrating as it may initially seem. As with decorating around any piece of furniture or any décor item, you just want to balance the similarities and differences.
Take some time to think about the exact color (and undertone) of your sofa, as well as its texture, defining features, shape, style, etc. Then choose other furniture, decorations, walls and floors around those ideas. Embrace similarity with a few of these elements and drive them home, but add in just a few differences to keep things interesting.
Your living room will come together in no time.
