10 pastel living room ideas for a perfect minimal look

Light, bright and versatile, the pastel colour palette can be a fantastic choice for interiors of all shapes and sizes. Used well, these eye-catching but unassuming shades can help you to create a fantastic contemporary aesthetic in your living area and really bring the interior of your home to life.

A prominent part of the Scandinavian colour palette, pastel tones can be used to create a full colour scheme in your living room or to accent and enhance your existing décor. To help you work pastels seamlessly into your property’s design theme and create the minimal look you’ve always wanted, we’re taking a look at some of the best pastel living room ideas for the modern home.

1. Choosing the right pastel palette

Although most pastel colours work well together, it’s a good idea to limit the number of tones you choose when creating a minimal interior design look. Where possible, keep your pastel palette to just one or two shades. Colour combinations like grey and pink and grey and blue work especially well together, so why not build your look around a pairing like this?

If you really want to go for a minimal aesthetic, choose one pastel shade and run it through your furnishings and accessories. Green, blue and grey can all look fantastic when layered up in a minimal interior. These calming, classic colours make it easy to create a space that’s contemporary and welcoming at the same time.

2. Calming pastel walls

The walls are an obvious place to start when it comes to laying down your colour scheme. As pastels are fairly unobtrusive, they can be used to paint walls even in minimal living room looks.

If you want to paint your walls a pastel colour, choose a tone that complements your existing furnishings and accessories. The key to a successful minimal look is a reduced colour palette and simple, but effective, layout. So, make sure your walls don’t clash with other colours in the space or make your living room look too busy.

If you’re worried about adding too much colour to your interior, simply paint one wall in your preferred pastel tone and keep the others white. This will add a little visual interest to the space without dominating your interior design theme.

3. Furnishings

If you like the idea of incorporating pastels into your living room, but don’t want to paint your walls in pastel shades, opting for pastel furnishings is a good alternative. Light pastel greys and blues can work really well for sofas and chairs, adding colour and style to your theme without grabbing the limelight.

Choosing pastel tones for your furnishings will help to keep your living room clean, contemporary and minimal. If you want to add any brighter tones to the space, you can do this using feature cushions or artwork. Matching brightly coloured accessories with pastel furnishings will allow you to create a modern minimal look that’s attractive and versatile.

4. Cushions

Alternatively, if you want to keep your living room look clear and calm, complement your pastel furnishings with pastel cushions. Using one colour palette for all of the features in your room will stop any one area dominating the space and make for a relaxing environment.

5. Plant pots

Pastel plant pots can work really well in modern interior design looks. Helping to enhance the bright green foliage of your favourite blooms, they’ll tie your potted plants to the rest of your interior décor and allow you to create a fantastic unified theme.

If you want to continue your pastel theme into your planting, choose plants with light foliage and pastel petals. Cacti and aloes can work really well potted in pastel planters, as can orchids and succulents.

6. Rugs

Whatever colour theme you’ve chosen, adding a complementary rug to the space is a great way to create a focal point in your living room and create a stylish seating area. Choose a white rug with a pastel pattern, or a rug in a block pastel colour, to really emphasise your theme.

If you already have a pastel sofa, walls or cushions in the space, make sure your rug matches these existing colours as closely as possible. If there’s a significant clash in tones, you may find your living room begins to look a little busy.

7. Window dressings

Pastels work really well for window dressings as the bright, airy tones will help to bounce light around the space and make the room feel bigger. If you currently have dark curtains or blinds around your windows, replacing them with pastel upgrades will dramatically change the look and feel of your room.

Again, it’s important to match the pastel tones of your window dressings with other pastel colours already in the space. If it’s not possible to match the shades exactly, it might be better to choose plain white curtains, blinds or shutters to keep your colour palette to a minimum.

8. Artworks

Take your pastel theme all the way into the artwork on your walls to emphasise your theme and create a successful minimal aesthetic. Whether you’ve framed some of your favourite pastel prints, asked an artistic friend to paint something special for the space or you’ve had a go at creating something yourself, sticking to a pastel palette will help to ensure it suits the space perfectly.

9. Lighting

While you probably won’t want to invest in pastel light bulbs – yes, they really do exist – there’s no reason your colour theme can’t extend to your lighting. An easy way to incorporate pastel tones into your lighting scheme is to choose lamps and lampshades in your favourite colours.

A feature standing lamp in your preferred pastel will look fantastic in the corner of your room or next to your sofa. Alternatively, hang a pastel-coloured ceiling light low over your coffee table to create a cosy feel and a central focal point.

10. All out pastel

When creating a minimalist look, pastel often works best when used sparingly. Introducing pastel as an accent tone for furnishings and accessories allows you to bring colour into your home without detracting from your minimalist aesthetic.

However, if you really want to make a statement with your pastel colour theme, why not go all out? Layer up your favourite pastel shades to create a space that’s both minimal and bursting with colour at the same time. Try to limit the number of shades you use to three or fewer to prevent your living room from looking overwhelming.

The pastel colour palette is ideal for people who want to add colour to their homes without dominating the space. The perfect choice for Scandi-style interiors, contemporary themes and minimal looks, pastels allow you to play with colour safely and stylishly.

To find out more about decorating your living room, and to explore the beautiful range of pastels in our collection of sofas, take a look at our Model 01, Model 02 and Model 03 ranges today.