If it was just my husband and I it would be fine the way it is. with children it’s a huge safety issue because if they stand on the couch they can go down the stairs. It’s driving me crazy to say the least. I feel others might look at the room differently than I would and would have a better idea

This will actually give you a path way from the back to the front, instead of the "hallway" being where the tv is, also I would just leave the wainscot trim up and paint it what ever color you paint the walls, and then paint the trim in the room around windows and doors white. There are other tweeks but we can get to that .

Hi!! I need help on placing my furniture in my awkward small japanese tatami bedroom. My room have one door connecting to the living room, one door to balcony, and one door connecting to my friends room which i will never use. I already have a bed which the current placement is the red box in the pic. I already bought hanger rack, mirror, cloth drawer which takes forever to arrive from amazon cuz i live in hokkaido. I planned to buy a bed side table (blue in pic) as well, but not sure if i should move my bed to align it or just put it in the corner. Can someone give ideas on how to place those furniture?

If some changes could be made to the interior, especially the kitchen, it might help woth furniture arrangement. Unfortunately, what I’m thinking would probably be undesirable for resale and hard-to-impossible to move furniture beyond the living room, but here it is anyway: Extend the island to one of exterior walls. On one side, it would force you to walk through the kitchen to go upstairs (what’s up there, by the way?). But, you could do this by simply placing a rolling island between the island and the wall. It keeps that from being a walkway, but is easily moved when desired. Or, on the other side, it would have you walking through the kitchen to get to the back bedroom, and the refrigerator would face the back hall. Anyway, either of these takes a walkway out of the living room, potentially allowing for furniture placement.