What a nice and sunny room you have! I'm no expert but I do have one suggestion. Wherever you decide to place the coffee table, scoot the child's chair up to it. I was always afraid to do that with mine, then I saw it done and it looks fantastic.

Silly, I know. :)

Oh, what a pretty room. You need to post a floor plan to scale, but I can't resist leaping in a little. For the way you use the room, it sounds as if you're really right to question focusing on the fireplace. It's not as if you're settling in for a long evening of staring into the flames, and it would be nice if yours were simply an attractive feature in the background of this nice room. Or perhaps a natural spot for a speaker to stand.

You need a room that invites people in and allows them to circulate freely and then find a seat that fits them and, in a few cases, that can be turned to join a conversation or face a speaker, like that nice scroll-arm chair. Two or if possible 3 conversation areas around the perimeter that all open toward the center?

This room is huge! I am assuming you now have a love seat and a sofa. With all this space,Ii would buy two sofas.

Float both sofas more toward the middle of the room. Line them up with the fireplace. Buy two big club chairs and put them across from the window wall.

I would find another place for the china cabinet. Your fireplace should be the focal point and it is competing with the cabinet.

I like your chairs around the small round table, but I am not sure if they look right where they are.
Is there room in your foyer near the staircase for them?

When you have your meetings. you can pull the chairs in from the foyer as well as dining room chairs.

Let's see:

Using the current furniture:

Remember -- arranging furniture can be a matter of mere inches to make a difference! :)

a)Move the stepped tables on the right-hand side of the sofa slightly more to the right and slightly up onto the rug ...and move the front legs of the big sofa onto the rug (so it doesn't look like it is "floating:)

b)Move the loveseat's front legs onto the rug too .... making a slightly more cozy seating area .....

b)Add a tall rectangular mirror above the fireplace to draw the eye up -- and be the natural focal point of the room as you walk in ....

e)Consider adding "something" under the stairs (in front of the air grate) so that the air grate is not the first thing that guests see as they enter your home .... maybe a thin dark table?

I would experiment using the furniture you currently have to see what different floor plans would work.

I understand your concerns about blocking the path to the dining room and wanting to keep an open look to the room, but sometimes we let those types of concerns hold us back from a useful change in the layout of the room.

So, experiment. Take your sofa and swing it around so that it faces the fireplace, floating in the middle of the room, completely on the rug. Put the loveseat at right angles to it on the left, with its back to the windows, also floating. For the time being, just put the other furniture anywhere.

Live with that configuration for at least 2 weeks. Is the dining room blocked off? (How often do you go straight from the front hall to the dining room on a regular basis?) Do the ceilings seem lower?

If it doesn't work, try something else. If it does work, then you get to figure out how much more seating you would need for meetings, etc., and add in some chairs and/or benches to accommodate the number of guests you normally have.

Thanks for all the great responses! I appreciate you all taking the time to chime in.

Oakleyok, the child's chair belonged to my DH's grandparents -the matching "adult chair" resides with his uncle -- no one sits on the little chair, but we like having it on display

Rosie, I will work on a floor plan. I have been busy with other things but decided I need to do this so we are ready to entertain this fall. We rarely if ever actually use the fireplace (maybe 3 times in the 25 years we have lived here). You stated it beautifully "You need a room that invites people in and allows them to circulate freely and then find a seat that fits them and, in a few cases, that can be turned to join a conversation or face a speaker, like that nice scroll-arm chair. " My question is how to create a "room that invites people in".

Ellendi, we do have a love seat and sofa now because that's what we had when we lived in New York -- 2 sofas sound appealing to me because we can always use more seating -- when you say to line up the sofas with the fireplace, I assume you mean perpendicular to the fireplace and not parallel -is that right? -the chairs are just near the round table because we brought the table from NYC and then my MIL gave us those chairs when she downsized -- we love the china cabinet -we bought it when we were first married and lived in London - it might fit in our dining room but unfortunately that it is the one room in the house that is small -we do sometimes bring in dining room chairs for our meetings and parties

Teacats -thanks for the advice about how to use our existing furniture -our sofa is shot, so we will be replacing that and probably the love seat at the same time --it is an excellent point about covering up the air grate -i will have to find something that can be in front of it without blocking airflow -maybe a table with slim bench chairs underneath -and i like the idea of a tall mirror over the fireplace

Camlan -i love your suggestion of moving our current furniture around to figure out what works for us -we do not use our dining room much as we have a breakfast room connected to the kitchen where we usually eat -we never go to the dining room from the entry way -and i don't think our friends do so often either

One other point -- we are willing to consider a different rug - I like this rug a lot (it has some of Omar Khayyam's Rubiat on it) -but DH thinks we should get something more modern -and we could, of course, get a different size

Thanks again!

I think you should remove the loveseat from it's current spot. It blocks the openness of your foyer.

I like the idea of two sofas, but I think the back of the second sofa will be too close to the piano.

I think I'd either do something totally different like doing 4 large club chairs with a table in the middle. Perhaps they swivel so you can turn and watch the piano player.

I've saved this photo for years but this is what I'm thinking. If you get larger sized chairs, it will fill the room.

Or, I'd keep the sofa where it is and do two club chairs across from it at an angle.

1 -

Thanks, Caroleoh. My son is the piano player, and although he no longer lives at home, he plays every time he is here and we, of course, want folks to look at him when they listen to him. (I may be prejudiced, but I think he is good.) I like the idea of chairs, but I am not sure we would have enough seating for our meetings/parties.