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Teal Living Room Decorating Ideas
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Teal Living Room Decorating Ideas

Discover how to decorate with teal hues in your living space

Joanne Quinn - Senior Interior Designer at LuxDeco Studio
By Joanne Quinn, Senior Interior Designer

Teal living room ideas are what inspire us to break from the mould, moving away from the typical whites and greys often seen in the sitting room. 

Teal is a colour full of depth and intrigue, referred to as a ‘bottom-of-the-lake hue’ because of its dark tones and still relatively unexplored quality. Teal is what lends it an air of mystery. It is also a colour shade that is remarkably easy to warm up or cool down with other colours in your room, making it more than palatable for all the seasons and for every style of home decoration.

But where to begin with teal living room ideas? How do you build teal into your living room colour scheme? And what other colour combinations does teal pair exceptionally well with?

Teal Living room by Natalia Miyar | Read more in the LuxDeco.com Style Guide
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How to Decorate your Living Room with Teal

Teal living room decorating ideas – or in fact for any room – almost always start with paintwork. Paint is one of the most straightforward and effective ways that you can update a scheme. But teal, like any colour, doesn’t come in just one form.

Delve into the different versions of teal, from the blue-based to the green-based and from dark to even darker, to find the one that will suit your taste most. Lighter teal tones edge towards robin’s egg blue and feel very English period home, whereas marine-like teals are bold and contemporary, but completely cosy too. 

It’s always worth investing in larger sheets of paper to try out any tester pots, because it gives you opportunity to move them around the room to see how they look in different lights – teal is a shade renowned for being multidimensional. Yet another aspect to its complex, beguiling character.

Teal living room accessories is a worthy area if you’re leaning more towards teal accents than an all-encompassing palette. Bursts of teal in soft furnishings, be it cushions or rugs, and even artwork, mean you can make teal part of your interior, but in a less obvious way.

Blend it with like shades to make it a subtle backdrop, but if you want your splashes of teal to stand out more, you’ll need to create contrast – white is one of the failsafe options for getting teal to ‘pop’.

Teal Living Room Colour Schemes

Teal pairs with many different colours, but first you should agree whether you want teal to be your feature or your accent colour.

Teal and Grey Living Room

The safest is a teal and grey living room. By retreating to the safe space of soft grey on your walls, it will pare back the punchiness of any lustrous teal upholstery. But teal and grey living room ideas don’t necessarily need to stay safe. Achieve drama in your sitting room with a combination of charcoal grey and dark teal. The overall effect will feel seductive and very polished.

Teal Living Room Ideas | Nolinski Paris hotel design by Jean-Louis Deniot | Read more in the LuxDeco.com Style Guide
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Teal and Yellow Living Room

If you want to add a dash of colour, think about using ochre or mustard, because a teal and yellow living room is another colour duo that works well. Much like how using brass or gilt finishes in a teal scheme adds opulence and a sophisticated point of difference, the same is true of a teal and mustard living room.

A footstool, a throw pillow, contrasting piping on your upholstery and window treatments, or even a few strands of yellow in a rug’s weave are all ways to build amber hues into your teal living room colour scheme.

Teal and Brown Living Room

One tone down from mustard brings you to the earthy option of a teal and brown living room. Brown is a reassuring place to turn if white feels too stark, grey not to your taste, and yellow and mustard too piquant. Brown in a teal living room acts as a neutral, an understated base and a lovely accompaniment to any wooden furniture.

Teal Living Room Accessories

No matter what shade of teal you choose, white is a go-to for your living room accessories – or even for accent chairs, sofas and footstools. If you want to play on teal’s cooler side, choose sleeker materials such as white ceramic in vases or decorative ornaments, and marble occasional tables, palatial columns and on a fireplace hearth and surround.

"Teal accessories in living rooms offer the hue without so much intensity – perfect for teal beginners!"

On the other hand, if you want to warm things up, go for types of wool like alpaca cushion covers and cashmere blankets in soft white.

Teal is equally a great lover of dark wood, so go from dark to light with parts of your living room furniture and accessories in walnut or dark brown-stained timber.

And, its match on the colour wheel is coral – though not everybody will be on board with two such strong colours in one room. If a playful Club Tropicana-inspired look is your inspiration however, teal and coral are a dream composition.

Teal and metallic finishes is another area to factor into your decorating. If you want to choose one finish above all others, gilt brings out the opulence that teal keeps just-below the surface. It’s a more understated colour than the classic jewel-like tones of emerald green, sapphire blue, ruby red and yellow diamond, but is undoubtedly regal. Golden or antiqued brass on mirrors, picture frames and lamp bases make that all the more apparent.

Teal Living Room Ideas | Living room design by Finchatton | Sophisticated Living Room Style | Read more in the LuxDeco.com Style Guide
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Even if you do choose a lighter shade of teal, it is always richly pigmented and commands attention, so when selecting a rug, a paler colour will achieve visual balance. Or, a textured, natural jute or sisal rug will do the same thing. But, if you aren’t concerned about the drama, seek out an equally as confident monochrome, hand-knotted Berber rug or a persian rug that has sections in teal to bind it to the rest of your bold and unreservedly beautiful scheme.

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