Hi, first of all I love your house and furniture. I like the first option better but how about this (I don't know if it works): put the couch under the window facing the dining room and put the console where the couch was originally. Possibly a big ottoman (rectangular) between the coffee table and the dining room (so you can sit and chat with the couch but not block the view of the dining), put the chair in the first option angled facing the console. I assume that's your front door, moving the console leaves that walkway more available. I would put something else there, a narrow table or chest of some type. Either art or mirror can go there or on console. Bring in some more green and I like the round mirror. Mariana

Thank you both for your input!! BeverlyFLADeziner - I am definitely having a harder time finding a 12x15 rug. Luckily I have an affiliation with a flooring company, so I will likely just do a cut and bound rug. Thank you for the visual, it definitely helped with perspective! Susan Davis - I love the furniture measurement guide for the rug size, thank you! I am probably going to use broadloom for the rug, having a tough time finding anything that would otherwise work. I appreciate the photos you added! The first one was great, I hadn't thought of putting a piece of furniture to the left of the fireplace - my only concern is that this may block the view of the fireplace from the entrance foyer. Maybe not. I'll have to play around with that.

I was thinking something along the lines of this... You can use the colors of the rug, like the terracotta, in your pillows on the chairs. It's too bad you don't have room for the alternative placement of the TV, and in that case I would get a console to put catty-corner on the walls next to the fireplace on the right, even though the windows will be behind the TV. Since you say this is not your permanent home perhaps that will do as a stopgap measure. The couch should be facing the fireplace, unless you want to angle everything to face the TV. The chairs will go perpendicular to the couch. The fireplace nook you can fill with a painting or perhaps an arrangement of blue and white Chinese porcelain (have a look at etsy). With a beautiful rug I'd suggest a glass and metal coffee table so the rug design shows through. You'd also need side tables but I see no way that you can have lamps without trailing cords. Find a way to display books on the tables, which give a lived-in look. Pardon me if I use pictures of my home to illustrate some of these points; your taste may be quite different, but it's just to give you some ideas. This rug is made of polypropylene and therefore much more affordable, but you can see how these colors would brighten your room and give you colors for pillows on your couch and chairs. You can find rugs on e-bay, overstock.com, pottery barn, just google area rugs and then indicate "traditional" or "oriental" and you'll find lots of ideas.

Going about this backwards! Furniture first! Paint colors are the last item to be chosen for a decorating project. Why? Because they need to work well with the fabric and textiles (upholstery, rugs, pillows, curtains) in a room. Those things are unable to be adjusted, but paint can be custom blended, even changes over the years, to suit them. As for the furniture, most living rooms do well with a 3-seat sofa and two upholstered armchairs as base pieces. Avoid matched sets of seating or casegoods; you need a more curated look if you want the home to have a stylish, hand-selected feeling. The current set up looks to have the dining table encroaching on the TV/FP area. Perhaps your friend can do with a smaller table there. Things to avoid: loveseats, artificial plants/flowers, mirrors that don't reflect/double something worth seeing twice, too much clutter. Hopefully, your friend has been ruthless in clearing out more stuff than she should move into this home.