How to Decorate an Ugly Sofa (Style Me Pretty Living)

We all have one. Whether it was a $99 craigslist find, a parental hand me down or an adopted gem from a roommate past – the ugly sofa is one item that I’m betting nearly every home in America has. So today, we’re working with what we’ve got and showing you just how easy it is to decorate around that sofa that simply needs a little love. And you can find more How-To’s right here!

1. If given the option, always start with a neutral color. Mainly because neutrals are far easier to jazz up. That said, these tips will work with ANY sofa of any color.

2. Fold a simple, lightweight throw blanket (scarves and heavy weight sheets also work) down the center. Think in opposites here – for a patterend fabric sofa, a solid throw works the best. For a solid color sofa, you can play around with prints on your throw blanket.

3. Find the one color that you love in the sofa and elevate it. On our sofa, a neutral beige became a starting point for gold. Muted pinks peaches could become richer hues in the same spectrum, grays can become metallics.

4. Layer on the throw pillows using your elevated color as the starting place. Keep your pillows like minded but mismatched. Generally speaking, five pillows fit beautifully across a small to mid sized sofa. I like to keep all of my pillows roughly the same size.

5. Add accessories to your room, keeping your efforts on 1-2 major focal points. A large scale coffee table filled with fun, colorful odds and ends OR a dramatic large scale painting above the sofa both do wonders for drawing the eye away from the blah and towards the beautiful.