French Polishing and Bespoke Furniture
When arranging living room furniture , there’s no need to crowd; leave room for traffic and an entry drop spot. Cozy key seating pieces up to the fireplace facing each other. Use end tables as landing spaces on both ends of the sofa . Pair chairs to balance the visual weight of the sofa and to maximize seating.
If you do not have central heating system consider placing your fireplace at the center, between your dining and living room . If your home has an open- space layout, this type of fireplace makes for an inviting location throughout the home and has the added bonus of keeping two spaces equally warm.
Large living rooms or great rooms sometimes have more than one conversation area. In a long living room with a fireplace on the side wall, one option is to place the sofa against the opposite wall and angle the other seating pieces on each side, creating a “U” shape or semicircle that faces the fireplace .
Once the seating area has been set (around the focal point), placing tables and storage cabinets is next. In a living room , the main coffee table or ottoman can be placed in the middle of the sofas and chairs. It’s best to allow 18 inches between a coffee table and sofa so drinks and the tv remote are within reach.
You can go ahead and orient your furniture toward the fireplace . It’s a long, narrow room that you walk through, so there are only two working walls where furniture can go. It felt like the obvious call to have the TV face the couch on opposite walls, exactly where the fireplace is.
As far as TV placement, you will want to mount your TV in the corner where your fireplace wall and a perpendicular wall meet. This, again, ties back to simplifying furniture arrangement by keeping key points of focus in closer proximity.
Layout Hacks: Our Favorite Tricks to Incorporate TV Viewing into any Living Room Layout Use the back of your sofa to define the space. Try swivel chairs for an easy swap to TV -viewing. Divide a large space into multiple zones. Place your TV next to the fireplace , on an angle. Use your sofa to divide the space.
It’s not advisable to mount a TV above a fireplace because excess heat and electronics don’t mix. The area above the fireplace is often warmer than other wall surfaces in your home. The farther the fireplace mantle extends into the room, the more it will deflect heat from the above wall (and TV mounted there).
If you want to get the most use out of your fireplace , plan to put the new fireplace in the most-used room in the house other than the kitchen, such as the family room or living room. For heating practicality, it makes sense to put it in a smaller, easy-to-heat room such as a master bedroom, office, or spare bedroom.
“People often feel their sofa has to be squarely in front of the television in their living room,” Kapur says. “On the contrary, TVs work well when they’re positioned off-center so they won’t become the focal point of all social interactions.”
A fireplace is definitely not a prerequisite for a living room . In fact, many new homes these days use only gas fireplaces if they put one in at all. The fact is a fireplace takes up valuable wall space in a living room , although it does serve as a place above which to mount a flat screen TV.
In front of a window : Although you never want to block a window , a sofa placed in front of one can look great as long as the back of the sofa is relatively low. Across from another sofa : Since visual balance is so important, there’s no better place to put a sofa than facing another, preferably matching, sofa .
10 Simple Decorating Rules for Arranging Furniture Choose a Focal Point. Don’t Push Furniture Against the Walls. Create Conversation Areas. Find Balance When Arranging Furniture . Consider Traffic Flow. Use the Right-Size Rugs. Get a Big Coffee Table. Put Tables at Arm’s Length.
Consider floating your sofa in the middle of a large room rather than placing it against the wall instead. Designers often float a sofa as a way to create a room within a room , to delineate different areas in a large space, or simply to center the focus.