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.
