I love your home! Lovely job on your kitchen remodel.

I have a long narrow living room (20ÃÂ13)with three tripple door ways two window seats and large fireplace which is used as the main living area for my young family as well. I do have an adjacent sunroom used as playspace though.

One thing that really freed the space for me was moving from two sofas to one and a comfy chair and ottoman. I do have a second sofa just feet away though in the sunroom that almost works as one very long room. Not sure if one sofa would be as appealing without the sunroom so close but your window seat look like a comfy place to stretch out and lounge on!

The reason I think I would like only one sofa in your room is that I would like to see your furniture pulled away from your walls a bit. I might try one sofa in front of the firplace/tv pulled forward of the wall a tad with the two wing chairs angled on each side also facing the tv and that will expose your lovely window seat.

With a narrow room like that, and putting two sofas facing each other with TV at the end, the TV viewing will not be comfortable unless you are sitting at the end of the couches. In my family room, which only has three walls, a fireplace on one, and the TV across from it, we only have one wall left for a couch. So the couch is perpendicular to the wall the TV is on, then opposite the couch to the left of my fireplace, is a nice big chair with footrest. I also have another big chair on the other side of the fireplace, next to my sofa, but it's not the best position for it. However, with four kids, there is ALWAYS a fight for who sits where. The favorite spots are the two chairs, and the end of the couch farthest from the TV. It is not comfortable to sit on the side of the couch nearest the TV and try to watch it b/c it means keeping your head turned to the side rather than looking at it straight on.

Looking back at your pictures, if you have two couches that run length wise, won't one be blocking the fireplace? If more floor space is a big consideration, I don't see how putting two couches facing each other with a narrow coffee table in between will net you more floor space unless you are looking for floor space to the side of the room?

Have you considered maybe a love seat and couch, but set up in the same L position that you have, get rid of the coffee table, and use end tables on either side of the couch (with one in the corner b/w the couch and love seat). Then you will have lots of floor space in the middle of the room.

I guess I first should ask what the floor space is for - to set up legos or for the kids to lay on? If for legos, perhaps you could put a big table in front of your window seat where they could set up their legos and use the window seat as a place to sit when they are working on them? It would also save your feet from stepping on forgotten pieces! ;)

This post was edited by fourkids4us on Mon, Jan 12, 15 at 12:06

Time to reorganize and purge, purge, purge.

I've tried to simply reorganize what you have so you can try the new arrangement with what you have already. This layout provides you with a defined entrance and entry table separate from the living room area.

Orange is location for art, and blue is location of flatscreen.

Thanks so much for all the helpful advice! Clearly no one is sold on my parallel sofas idea. Neither is my husband although his concerns are solely about optimal TV viewing!

I am pretty stuck though. @roarah, I have always admired your beautiful pictures, especially that sunroom! I wish I had just a little more space and could go with pulling the furniture away from the walls. But 12" width is tough!

@fourkids4us, your stories of fights over couch placement is exactly what happens here! I only have 2 kids but when they're wrestling for the prime spot it feels like many more. The oldest is 10yo and already over 5ft tall, and his brother is on the same track. That's partly why I want to maximize seating space as well as floor space - lots of room for big slouchy boys to sit without feeling overstuffed with furniture.

The fire place really isn't an impediment. It's super fake, bought in the dark dark days before I knew of GW, as a means of assuaging my regret about a house bought for the school district rather than the actual construction. The fireplace was originally golden oak and on a now demolished wall in the breakfast area. It could be hauled to the dump in a heartbeat, since I'm inching closer to a stage of life when I can reasonably imagine having the funds to install a working gas fireplace.

@beverly27, your suggestion makes total sense but it would put the back of the sofa to the primary entry to our living room. Right now there's an odd kind of flow - the front door opens into the breakfast area, the kitchen is (forgive me) a true corridor galley, and then you enter the living room. It's one of the few aspects of this weird, weird layout that "works" and makes the place seem less cramped. Reversing the position of the sofa would be a big roadblock in our normal traffic patterns and sight lines. And the demilune and chairs on the interior wall would literally never be used.

So I'm still struggling. I can't afford to lose a couple of feet at either end of the main living space. But until I can do a real remodel, the 3 doorways are a huge constraint on reconfiguring. I'm still drawn to the 2 sofas facing each other idea, in part because I've seen other (admittedly mostly much bigger) photos on Houzz and even among a couple of GWers - it was a thread by @mahlgold on coffee table sizing that got me thinking about this, and I also noticed that @kwsl's most awesome basement renovation in history did the same.

But I'll be drawn and quartered if I move things around and my husband or kids can't comfortably watch TV. I may post separately and see how people feel/deal with perpendicular TV watching....

smalloldhouse, I'd still suggest you try my layout. You don't need to purchase a single piece of furniture to accomplish it.

What I don't understand is placing a sofa in front of a window seat like your arrangement is now. Additionally, your current location of chairs is not conducive for conversation. Try it for the weekend.

I really appreciate your point and I don't know how to illustrate precisely why it wouldn't work other than to explain that every single person who entered my living room would have to walk around the sectional to sit down. Which is inconvenient at best and in all likelihood would entail 2 large boys vaulting over the back of the sofa 18x per day.

I'm trying to open up the space - I don't want a big piece of furniture bisecting it. The current position of the sectional only sacrifices the last few feet, which didn't seem like a big deal since the window seat was never a huge draw. But now I want to use every square inch!

We live just outside a major city, and this is not an unusually small house for the area. It is incredibly poorly laid out though, due to various additions by the previous owners. The smaller houses in my neighborhood get knocked down for rebuilds (there's a 9k sqft house going up next door!) and dealing with this space, I better understand why it's nice to start from scratch!

How about taking away one seat of the sectional (the middle left seat) in bev's plan and place it like an ottoman infront of the alone seat and see how bev's lay out would work with a three seat sofa comfy chair and ottoman would work in the room. That is the layout that works best in my similar narrow long old living room;).

What about if you just flip bev's plan and put the TV on the wall with the entry door and the sectional on the opposite wall, with the sofa part of the sectional on the wall and the loveseat part sticking out into the room. This would be similar to your current arrangement, but would open up the area in front of the window seat.

Instead of an L-shaped sectional, how about a longer U-shaped sectional?

Well this arrangement is perfect for me as it is properly ventilated and your room is getting great amount of natural sunlight. If you could place a shaggy rug with non-shedding fibres then it would be another great addition for your home. One more thing I cannot see a fireplace anywhere.

My living room is a very similar size and shape. The narrow width makes it so hard to arrange furniture! I have a couple ideas, but which wall has the doorway to the DR? Is it to the left of the fireplace, or to the left of your sectional?

bac717, why didn't I think of that? It's a reasonable option. Might eliminate vaulting boys.

Thanks everyone - much more to ponder here.

@roarah, I think almost any sofa direction is going to entail a big ottoman. I've avoided it to date because the kids use the coffee table for so much coloring/lego building/etc (which explains why it needs replacing) but if I replace the sectional with anything other than another sectional, I'll definitely want to try a big cushy ottoman.

@Beverly27 and @bac717, I like this idea and need to play with it some more. The difficulty is that there is a 4ft wide window on that wall. There would still be enough space to place the TV between the window and the door, but there tends to be a pretty bright glare from the window itself. (That may change within the next few weeks, when the house under construction next door gets its upper floors, sigh.) It's worth shifting the furniture around to see if it might work! My husband is out of town for the next couple of days - time for some experimentation!

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@suero - the U-shaped sectional is a really interesting idea. I need to hunt around the web to see if I can find something like that...it would eliminate all the battles for prime TV watching seats.

@jlc712, I realize I hadn't posted a proper diagram or clear photos; all these are old blurry cell shots in my photobucket library. I'll try for something better after work, but the entry to the dining room is on the same wall where the TV/"fireplace" is currently situated - directly opposite the exterior door.

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@kidrowlam, the one thing that is staying in the room for the foreseeable future is the Persian rug - it was a wedding gift from my MIL (and we have no other place for it!) The faux fireplace is in the first photo in my first post, under the TV. I'm totally ready to junk it if I can improve the space....

Thanks everyone - I'll try some of these ideas tonight/tomorrow!

Now that I see the window on the outside wall and the door leading to the DR, I think placing the sectional on the inside wall between the door to DR and the window seat and the TV on the wall space between the window and the entry door makes even more sense. I hope you give it a try.

What is the purpose of the window seat anymore? I know everyone thinks they are charming, but I can't imagine anyone in your home using this feature. That would open the room up to some additional options and you would gain some square footage.

Hi everyone, just circling back with an update. I took apart the sectional yesterday and moved it around the room to get a sense of what worked. Unfortunately, I really didn't like reversing the sectional as @bac171 & @beverly27 suggested - it basically hived off the relevant space of the room to a 12x14 ft box.

I actually liked the mock-up of my original plan - 2 sofas running length-wise on either side of the room, with the TV shifted to the interior wall. I had talked myself out of it based on some of the feedback here, but it felt like a nice space for conversation, and equally well suited to a pack of tween-ish boys playing video games. Even my husband, who hates change esp if it interferes with NBA watching, was half-way sold; it helps that he likes to watch and nap on the part of the sectional that is perpendicular to the TV already.

Here's a lousy shot with the existing furniture (deconstructed sectional); if we go this route, I need to find super long and comfortable sofas. I also need to think about the coffee table - would I want long and skinny? I'm thinking maybe oval-ish, or maybe a couple of smaller side tables instead? Any opinions?

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I think you found your solution, two long comfy sofas. It looks lovely! I might like a square coffee table between the sofas so it can be used by both if it would not impede upon flow too much.

Where is the television in this current set up? I would not want to crane my neck to see it..