Lowboard Decorating: Styling Ideas for the Space Under Your TV

A large flat-screen television dominates the room with a cold, smooth black surface. To break up this harsh technical look, interior designers deliberately use natural materials. The combination of cool glass and warm wood or stone creates tactile contrasts that the eye perceives as pleasant and homely. Particularly coarse-grained woods such as brushed oak or open-pore walnut bring an organic vibrancy to the otherwise very geometric TV zone.

This material mix can be excellently supported by the decoration. A coarse travertine bowl, linen coffee table books or dried branches in a glass vase add new textures to the arrangement. Similar to what we describe in our guide on how to decorate a coffee table, this also involves the conscious layering of different materials in a confined space. The light cast by indirect lighting emphasises the wood grain and casts soft shadows, which significantly enhances the evening room atmosphere.

Here's how in 3 steps:

1. Choose a base furniture piece with visible wood grain as a warm counterpoint to the TV.
2. Place a maximum of three decorative objects made of matt, mineral materials (e.g. natural stone, unglazed ceramics) on top.
3. Add a textile element, for example, a linen book cover, to further break the harshness.

Furniture Tip for Warm Contrasts: The Livitalia Wooden Lowboard Configurator allows you to match the perfect real wood shade to your flooring and other furnishings, creating a harmonious base for your natural decor.

A classic beginner's mistake in decoration is strict symmetry: a vase on the left, a vase on the right, the television exactly in the middle. The result often looks rigid and resembles an altar. True homeliness and visual tension are created through asymmetry. Here, we don't balance identical objects against each other, but rather optical weight. A single, massive element on one side is balanced by several lighter elements on the other.

Imagine a conceptual set of scales. If the television is centrally placed, for example, position a tall green plant or a slender floor vase on the left side of the furniture. To balance this weight, arrange a low, horizontal element on the right side – such as a stack of three large-format coffee table books. These differences in height compel the eye to wander across the entire arrangement, instead of lingering only in the middle.

Here's how to achieve it in 3 steps:

1. When planning, deliberately move the piece of furniture a few centimetres away from the exact centre of the room, if wall width allows.
2. On one side, introduce a vertical highlight (vase, lamp, plant) that slightly overlaps the height of the television.
3. On the opposite side, group small, horizontal objects to restore optical balance.

Furniture Tip for Modern Room Concepts: The Livitalia Lowboard C101 already incorporates this principle in its design through its asymmetrically arranged fronts and open compartments, making asymmetrical styling significantly easier for you.

Often, it's the subtle proportions that make the difference between an ordinary furniture store look and high-end interior design. A crucial factor in showcasing decorative objects is the thickness of the supporting surface. Standard furniture usually uses top panels of 1.5 to 2 centimetres. A solid top panel of 6 centimetres thickness fundamentally changes the entire perception of the furniture piece. It gives the furniture a solid gallery character.

This material thickness acts like an optical pedestal. A simple bronze sculpture or a bowl immediately appears more significant and high-quality on a chunky panel. We describe similar upgrading effects in our article on how to decorate a sideboard. The overhanging edge of a chunky top panel also creates a more pronounced shadow gap, which gives the furniture piece more sculptural depth in the room and extremely extends the horizontal lines of the space.

Livarea Expert Tip:When using chunky top panels, opt for delicate, metallic decorative elements. The contrast between the solid base and the fine structure of the decoration creates maximum design tension.

Furniture Tip for Extravagant Displays: The Livitalia Lowboard with Chunky Top Panel elevates every accessory placed upon it to an exhibition piece and brings Italian architecture directly into your living room with its solid proportions.

The biggest obstacle to appealing decoration is often the television itself – more precisely, its monstrous stand. If the TV stands directly on the top panel, it breaks up the usable surface in the middle and forces us to squeeze the decoration into small marginal zones on the left and right. The solution from professional practice is the complete liberation of the surface. By moving the television to the wall, an uninterrupted, elongated display surface is created beneath it.

It becomes even more elegant when the furniture piece directly integrates the bracket. If you choose a lowboard with TV bracket, the screen pivots on a metal column above the furniture, while all HDMI and power cables completely disappear into the column. This construction protects delicate walls from drilling and allows you to place large-format art books or expansive bowls centrally beneath the screen – where the television's plastic stand previously blocked the space.

Sometimes a single horizontal line is not enough to give structure to a large living room. If the ceiling height is enormous, a solitary floor-standing piece of furniture can quickly look lost. Here, it is advisable to expand the design framework and consider the furniture piece as part of a larger modular system. A combination of floor storage and hanging shelf elements creates a visual bridge upwards.

With this extended planning, the decoration strategy shifts. The principle of distributed functions comes into effect: the area beneath the television remains extremely minimalist so as not to disturb the viewing experience. The actual decoration – book collections, small sculptures, or hanging plants – moves into the open shelf modules above or next to it. Through this approach, the tech zone maintains its design serenity, while the room as a whole appears homely and vibrant.

Livarea Expert Tip:Paint the back wall of the open shelf compartments in a darker accent shade than the rest of the wall. This gives the decorative objects placed there a stage-like depth effect.

Furniture Tip for Individual Room Solutions: The Novamobili Reverse Lowboard Configurator allows you to masterfully combine precise floor storage with airy hanging elements, offering multi-layered levels for your personal interior styling.