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Home Decorating Design Dilemma living room

furniture placement, corner fireplace, walkways around, diagonal walls

5 years ago

Hello,

Please help me arrange furniture in this terribly-designed Family Room of mine! I have a corner fireplace and walkways from the kitchen to the other bedrooms and a long entryway all in the same space. I've had the house for 3 years now and it's been a nightmare.

I currently have 2 sofas and 1 loveseat along with a media console.

I've attached 3 pictures -- 1st of emply floor plan, 2nd with the builders' (terrible) furnioture placement which blocks off the windows and fireplace completely; and the 3rd of how I have it currently but all the wackways are in the middle and makes putting in a rug or side tables EXTREMELY difficult.

Can someone please help me design a REAL family room (with a rug and side tables) for my weirdly designed family room, please?

Featured Answer

Manon Floreat

5 years ago

Another idea is below. As noted, I think floating the furniture will help pull the seating arrangement together.

I think Sina's arrangement would look something like this. Play around with them and see which suits you best.

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Comments (11)

PRO
Sina Sadeddin Architectural Design
5 years ago
Well the issue is you have too much furniture for the space. Get rid of one of the sofas or love seat. Keep the TV where it is against the wall, but pull up the sofa opposite it so it's floating rather than against the wall. Then you have a walk way to the bedrooms. Put one sofa/loveseat facing the back windows. If you need additional seating get two accent chairs to put near the fireplace.
queenvictorian
5 years ago
Oof.. this is tough. The problem with the family room is that it's not so much a room in its own right as it is a junction for all the other rooms. Due to where the bedroom doorways are and how the kitchen and foyer connect to it, you have lots of square footage taken up by pathways to get to the other rooms.

I don't think either the builder's suggestion or your configuration really works - the builder's doesn't work because it's cramped and basically ignores the fireplace... that they put there. Yours doesn't work because it has furniture against the walls (a la waiting room) that require people to have to walk in front of anyone seated to get to a bedroom. I agree with above - you need to float the seating and probably eliminate a sofa and replace with some sitting chairs (which will give more flexibility).
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My great room is 16 deep x 20 wide from wall to wall. The built in cabinets take up 2' of space and the fireplace hearth eats another 2'. My furniture arangement is as you describe - I have a 5' walkway behind the sofa and 3.5' between the fireplace hearth and coffee table. We also have french doors that open to the covered patio but we elected to have them swing out to save that interior floor space. I have a 8x12 rug in the room and my sofa, tables and 2 chairs are arranged around that and the seating pieces have front legs on, back legs off the rug. We have plenty of room to walk around the furniture but it is still intimate enough for conversation. My house is nowhere near as formally appointed as the ones in the pictures above and upon the advice of a decorator friend, my furniture sits closer together than is normally seen in staged photos but again, it works for us.
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Comments (2)
Congrats on #7. My friend has a similiar layout. She has 2 upholstered couches and 2 leather chairs in her room along with a table between the chairs and a coffee table and maybe one more on the other side of one of the couches. The way she did it was to place the chairs sort of in a 'v' with the table in the corner between the built-in's and in what would be your hallway area. Then one couch backs to the kitchen and one backs to the windows. However, this sort of renders one of the chairs less useful for TV watching if it is in the built-in area (hers is). This friend is a decorator for what that is worth!! The room is very warm.
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Wow, very cool house. I love angled fireplaces and it's nice to be able to see more of the house. I think you were on the right track in the beginning. This could be the room where you dispel the idea of your decorating being "sterile". While I do think a warm area rug would be great in the room, I don't see the need for duplicating bookcases from your other room. Textured window treatments, leather chairs and game table, a chest for keeping the games and a library table on the opposite wall. Lots of art, the larger scale the better, especially if you have 10' ceilings. You might even want to go a little deeper in the paint color there or change to a muddy green (though I like the paint in general). Very fun room to work on. Good luck!
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Comments (3)
Here is how I would arrange it. Not having dimension, this is obviously not to scale, but gives you general idea. I'd use round features when possible to eliminate the look of the angled wall. Example: here I used a round rug and chairs. I don't know how much space is in the bay window area or if you need to place a dining table there. But, if so, this is one option of how to fit a dining table in smaller space: scoot it up to the back of the sofa. I also do not have information on what furniture you have, but I would not use 2 sofas as the current owner is showing. I'd use one sofa and a couple of chairs, as show below. Hope that helps. Let me know if I can help further.
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Leslie Kreger
5 years ago
Agree....you need to lose the piece in front of the windows and go with an L-shaped configuration (sectional or sofa/love) facing the tv wall. Two armchairs with a small table in between can go in front of the windows.
PRO
JudyG Designs
5 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago

Going to give it a go...

TV goes on bedroom #3 wall; one sofa where t v is now and the other sofa at 90* angle (replicating a sectional). One sofa is directed at the t v; the other sofa is looking at the fireplace. Loveseat finds a home in another room and it is replaced by two SWIVEL chairs…same spot as in the photo. Those can swivel left or right, servicing the fireplace or the t v.

For the two sofas…ottoman/coffee table.
PRO
Anglophilia
5 years ago
A 60" sofa/loveseat and two club chairs will be about all you can do in this small space.
Patricia Tucker
5 years ago
What program did you use to do the floorplan ?
Nida Khan
Original Author
5 years ago
@Patricia - I went on the builder’s website and downloaded the floor plans from there.
Nida Khan
Original Author
5 years ago
@Manon and @JudyG these ideas are amazing! Thank you so much! I’m going to have to move the loveseat to another room and will look for chairs to put next to the fireplace. Any idea on how large of a rug size I would need to fill up the space? 8x10?
PRO
STUDIO MB
5 years ago
skmom
5 years ago
I had a family room in my last home that was very similar to this one, and I had my furniture pretty much exactly like Sina suggested, except I only had one accent chair (it was a rocking chair) because we were still a young family and still trying to acquire more furniture. Anyways, that layout worked great for us and I was going to suggest it until I saw it was already suggested.
We eventually got a rug, it was 8’x10’ and it worked well enough to have the front legs of the furniture on it, but not large enough for it to go under all the the furniture. Hope that helps!

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