Living room dimensions?

18 years ago

Our house has 3 rooms on the main floor - kitchen and attached (one wall open) dining room and the separate living room. When you walk into the house, you see the space between the dining room and kitchen, you don't see the opening to the living room at all.

When people come to visit, they walk into the kitchen, but since there is nowhere to sit in there, they end up sitting down at the dining room table. I don't mind having people around while I'm flitting about putting the finishing touches on dinner or whatever, but I find it stressful to have everyone plunk themselves down at the table and looking like they are waiting to be served. On the other hand, when people do actually end up in the living room, it's a bit of a pain to have a conversation if I'm going back and forth to the kitchen.

All this to say...we're finishing our basement, and will be moving our living room furniture down there and replacing it when we're done. At that point, we're considering flipping the dining and living rooms. This will give us a nice big dining room with a fireplace (and room for a buffet/sideboard, piano and maybe small sitting area) and a smaller seating area open to the kitchen. My only concern is that the "new" living area will be too small (it's 10.5 feet wide, 12 feet long on the outside wall with a patio door, 7 feet long on the opposite wall adjacent to the stairs)

I think we'd be looking for seating for 4-6 and will change the kitchen island to have a bar-style overhang where people could sit too, but I've been wondering if the size of the room is realistic to do this. Currently the dining room houses a 60-inch square dining table (seats 8) and corner bookcases we use as a china cabinet. Pulling out the seats near the bookcase is squishy.

What are the dimensions of your small living room (or other seating area), what furniture do you have in it and how functional is it? Showing your layout would be greatly appreciated! Many TIA.

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Comments (4)

emagineer
18 years ago
There was a posting in the Decorating forum today about "Keeping Rooms". Links and wonderful pics of small rooms. I loved them. The thread was called Where Oh Where?....so you don't get confused...and listed below.

Here is a link that might be useful: Keeping Room
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johnmari
18 years ago
My living room is a very poorly designed 12x12 room. It's open to the kitchen via a wide doorway (which we'd narrow by 1/3 when we redo the kitchen eventually) and is the primary traffic lane to the kitchen from the front door which is the main entrance, the mudroom entrance is on the opposite end of the house from the driveway so it's NEVER used. We don't have a family room. Here's the floorplan:

{{!gwi}}

The big green blob is a big cushy upholstered bench - kind of like a ginormous ottoman, 61x27" - that I call my "lounge". Piled with pillows it makes a great nesting spot with a book, and it will seat three friendly people. One of the things that makes the room so irritating is that there's pretty much only one way it can be arranged. I can't move the couch in front of the window because it'll block the heat (that whole wall is taken up by a baseboard radiator) as well as get the leather cooked by both the heat and what sun comes into that bay window. Moving the tv to the other side of the fireplace would put it in just the right place to catch the glare from the window, that's where we put it when we first moved in - for about a day and a half! The LR also has two small wooden armchairs, which I'd really like to get rid of but can't afford to replace at this time. I'd love to put a little settee (the sort that's up on legs so as not to block the heat) there if I found one shallow enough front-to-back; we inherited a little Eastlake piece that I was going to put there but DH loathed it. LOL We can seat 8, 9 if we bring in another chair from the library, without anyone having to take a floor pillow. With lawn chairs and floor pillows we got more than 20 in there for our House-Swarming, but it's not something I'd want to do often!

We also did the flipperoo - the room we use as the LR was originally the DR but we really wanted the fireplace in the LR, so we designated the original LR (same size but not a traffic lane) as DR which we converted into a library because we needed the room for the books! We're fanatical readers and don't even have all the books unpacked because we haven't got bookshelf space for them all... and we don't even save everything we read. LOL
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You have to keep in mind not only the overall proportions, but the traffic paths through the room, which will need their own width independent of the furniture arrangement. The space only works as "ideal" if there are no traffic paths, which is unrealistic in today's open plan. Also, a conversation seating grouping that is much larger than 10x10 becomes uncomfortable to hold those conversations. If the primary purpose of the room is to view TV, you may not be concerned about that. But if you expect the room to support both TV viewing and talking, you will be at cross purposes for the furniture arrangement in such a large room. You either need to reduce the overall size to support conversation, or pick another room for that function.
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My living room is very similar, 12 x 25. My entryway is closer to the corner, and built-ins flank the fireplace. Different, yet harmonious rugs break up the tunnel (facing different directions helps too, I think). The front third has a smaller rug, running away from the entry, a piano and a round table centered on the rug. It can look nice but people just throw stuff on it. The center of the room has the larger rug, the FP flanked by armchairs placed away from the built-ins. Sofa facing FP, but not centered. Rug is not quite centered either. Does not bother me. My problem area is the back third, a corner filled with windows and a corner with a small TV that is hard to see. I am imagining that your room is somewhat formal like mine? With all the windows, I can't imagine a den-like room. I am seeing 2 loveseats perpendicular to the FP, facing each other, small table in between. With a rectangular table on the wall facing the FP, with 2 small chairs on either side. The back third would be good for some floor/reading lamps and comfy armchairs - more a private space. A round game table and small chairs would be useful, for cards or puzzles or what you like to do.
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IMO if the TV is the focal point remove the FP it is not doing anything for the space and IMO a sofa and 2 chairs would be a better choice for furniture and honestly without measurements of the spaces around this it is hard to get a feel for this space. I think there is no room for a pool table since you require 5’ all around it. I find the easiest way to figure out what fits is to draw a to scale plan on graph paper then go to the drscription of the pieces ypua re planning and cut those out in the same scale adn marked the min. walkwys and paly with the pieces to see what works. in your case the pool table needs space sp start there if the pool table is a must. BTW there is no such thing as a sectional with 4 comfortable seats the only seats that are comfy are the ones with an armrest so 2 seats no matter how big the sectional is.
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mlzellers
18 years ago
@ johnmari: what program did you use to mock up your living room?

Im in the same boat as the OP and i think being able to move stuff around in a virtual enviroment would help me out greatly.
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johnmari
18 years ago
That's the free Arrange-A-Room utility at BHG.com. Limited, but well, it's free! LOL I added some details and touchups in Paint but the main part of it is from BHG.

Because I know someone will ask ;-) to be able to share your plan you need to make a jpeg out of it, you can't post a link to the site and have it cough up your plan. What you do is put the BHG window to its maximum size and press the "PrtSc" key on your keyboard. This takes a "screenshot", saving a picture of whatever is on your screen. Open up your Paint program (if you're using Windows, or whatever its equivalent is if you're on a Mac or Linux) and choose "paste" to paste that screenshot into that program. Crop off all the extraneous stuff and when you go to save it, choose "save as" and scroll down to ".jpeg". Then upload it to your preferred photo hosting site like photobucket or picturetrail, and copy the html tag they provide (the one with angle brackets like , not the one that has square brackets like [ ]) in your post.
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Living room dimensions?

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emagineer

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