Arranging living room
furniture in a right way decides whether your living
room looks cluttered and overstuffed or an organized
comfortable room where you like to spend most of your
time. We will learn how to make a living room
furniture layout and see how living room furniture
placement can help us in making our lives easier.
The first step to plan how to put
the furniture in the living room is to measure up the room and
draw a sketch of the room on a graph paper using a scale such as
¼ in to 1 ft. Note down where and how many windows and doors are
situated in the living room, their size, the height of the
windowsills and the space between the windows and the doors.
Be sure to mark the location of the electrical points and outlets,
telephone point, cable and light switches in the living room to
help you know what goes where. You can also use small-scale
furniture paper cutouts to see your living room will look after
arranging the furniture. Choose a focal point of the living room
and arrange your furniture and lighting around it. Some of the
popular focal point ideas in a living room are a fireplace, a view
from the window, window opening out in a garden, a large bookcase,
sofa with a special painting hung above it, a home theater system
or big size plasma television.
You may also turn one of the corners of the living room in a focal
point using an interesting lamp, tabletop waterfall or other
unique decorative pieces on it along with the lighting to
highlight it. Set up conversation areas for your guests. There
should 4 to 10 ft of distance between your sofa or loveseat and
chairs, so that people can talk to each other easily. Less than 4
feet of distance will make your living room too cramped, while
more than 10 feet of distance between sofa and the chairs will
make conversation difficult. Legroom between the sofa, loveseat or
chairs and the coffee table should be at least 14 to 18 inches.
Try to make pathway to walk freely in the living room without
stumbling on the furniture that is at least 2 to 3 feet wide.
Furniture placement and layout in a small living room can be quite
challenging. In a typical apartment living room with space
restraints, we will usually find that the entertainment center is
the biggest piece of furniture and has to be placed at the right
position first. Rest of the furniture is set around it. The sofa
goes directly opposite to the TV and you may place the chair at an
angle. It can be turned around to watch TV or talk to the person
sitting on the sofa at your convenience. Two chairs on either side
of the sofa will give a balanced look to the room.
In a small living room, the height and mass of the furniture
should be too contrasting. A low table against a high back chair
can be visually balanced by adding a tall piece of art above it.
Do not use bulky cabinets and sleek metallic chairs together.
Maintain visual harmony and thematic balance in your living room
decor. Keep the number of the pieces of furniture down to avoid
cramped look in a small living room. Use two love seats facing
each other instead of four chairs or one sofa and two chairs
instead of one loveseat and three or more chairs. Tall living
rooms can be subtly divided into separate conversation and work
areas by using a sofa or other big piece of furniture that does
not need support of a wall to divide up the room.
