Plan a living room you’ll love

With PDL, the living is easy

Our living rooms are multi-functional spaces – they need to switch easily between family movie nights and coffee catch-ups, online gaming sessions, sleepovers, and Sunday afternoon naps on the couch.

With a little planning, you can create a living room that moves seamlessly from one activity to the next, catering to everyone’s needs.

Plan it out

Make a list of how everyone in the family might want to use this room. This will help you to work out what sort of electrical features you’ll need, and where to put them.

A television is often a major feature of a living room, so give some thought as to where it might go and how your furniture will work around that. If you want to avoid having a TV screen as the room’s focus, consider tucking it out of sight in a cabinet or installing a laser tv projector instead.

If there are avid gamers in the family you’ll want somewhere to connect gaming consoles and charge controllers. And keen readers might love a reading nook with a cosy armchair and a lamp nearby.

This initial list is the first step in the Electric Home Design for your living room.

How to use Electric Home Design

A hand plugging a type-c cable into a wall socket with electrical outlets and USB ports

Power it up

Once you know how you want to use the room, it’s time to select the electrical products that will help you achieve your vision.

Start with enough power points for everything, so you don’t have to use multi-plug power boards, which look messy and can be a fire hazard. Allow for a television, sound system and speakers, and any gaming consoles.

Think about where you might put floor or table lamps to add atmosphere. If you’ll have a Christmas tree in this room, where would it go?

Consider adding some PDL Connected Switches for your lamps. These can link to an app on your smart device so you can control them with a screen tap or schedule them to turn on and off at set times. This is really useful for making it look like someone’s home if you’re out, or just for adding a soft glow to the room each evening. Over the festive season you can simply plug in the Christmas tree lights and set a daily timer. Job done! (Click next picture for more)

Get connected

Your living room will likely be one of the most connected rooms in your home. As well as TV/AV points, think about dedicated data points with cabled internet for faster streaming and gaming too.

Home WiFi systems can often struggle with the growing demand for streamed content. Having cabled internet can significantly increase your internet speed, connection, reliability and overall security.

It’s a great way to make family life easier with less competition between streamed movies, online gaming and work video calls. (Click next picture for more)

Add some extras

There are some simple additions that can help to transform life at your place too.

Dimmers for overhead lights give you flexibility, while Blind Controllers let you transform your living room into a darkened movie theatre at the tap of a smartphone screen.

You could also include a couple of power points with USB-C Fast Chargers built in, because these days someone always needs a charger.

You can ensure the space stays at a comfortable temperature year-round with a Temperature/Humidity Sensor that can activate a fan or automatically open and close blinds to let in or keep out the heat.

And for a luxe warm glow, or a splash of colour, run smart LED light strips along the underside of a TV cabinet or display shelving and then link them to your smartphone app to easily adjust the colours and brightness.

Couple watching a movie and eating a popcorn in the living room

Make it safe

With so many electronic elements in our living rooms, it’s important to make sure your switchboard is equipped to deal with the load.

Talk to your electrician about a surge protection device to avoid damage to your electronic equipment from lightning strikes, power surges and voltage strikes. Arc Fault Detection Devices (AFDDs) also add extra peace of mind as they detect arc faults – one of the most common causes of electrical fires.

Be safe at your place

Style it up

Your living room’s style extends far beyond the furnishings, so select light switches and power points that complement your look.

PDL Iconic offers a wide range of styles, shades and finishes – and the bonus is that you can easily swap them out as the mood takes you. Once the base grid is installed by an electrician, you can clip the different Iconic ‘skins’ on and off whenever you want.

Choose your Iconic

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