How to make this room work?

[Gambisk]

Hey, myself and my wife recently moved into our new home and we are a bit stuck with trying to layout the living room furniture. All of the furniture that we have has come from our old house and we have tried a few layouts but are not overly happy with either. I'd appreciate some feedback on how we can really make the best use of the space we have.

Excuse the boxes and piles of stuff everywhere we are still trying to figure out storage for the rest of the house so there are piles of things everywhere. Also the horrendous curtains will be going as soon as we have time to make new ones, they were a cheep fix.

Layout one:

Layout two:

Plan:

What we have noticed so far is that the first layout is good if we want to watch something on the TV, but makes the room feel smaller and is quite tight squeezing between the two sofas if we are going into the kitchen.

The 2nd layout is a neck breaker if we are watching TV but is awesome when there are people round and we are chatting or playing board games.

With both set-ups we are at a loss what to do with the other end of the room, all suggestions will be taken on board.

 

[SPG]

TV on the wall, small sofa in front of window, will the big tall sideboard fit against the kitchen wall ? If not i have saw if your not far away.

 

[johnny6]

Layout 1 but with the brown sofa and the TV switched?

 

[Gambisk]

TV on the wall, small sofa in front of window, will the big tall sideboard fit against the kitchen wall ? If not i have saw if your not far away.

The sideboard is actually two book shelves so should be able to squeeze them both in, or at worst one. I'll give it a shot over the weekend, it will take a while to empty the books out of them.

 

[bitslice]

1st.
Consider why you have so much storage in a living room, does any of it need to be in that exact room, all of the time.

TV's should be at eye level, not raised up on a sideboard

ditch the wooden coffee table and get one with a central glass pane, visually they take up less space. Although consider if you really need one there all the time.

All that crap on the table right now (flowers, candles, mini house, pictures, tissues)
THROW IT ALL AWAY
If your eye is drawn to piles of clutter, then everything looks tiny

Get a rug, the room then has a visual centre.


Layout.
Mount the TV on the short wall between the two doors.
Put matching lamps or uplighters either side of it

Put the two sofas in the opposite corners, at an angle.
Put a floor mounted reading lamp behind each sofa

Get some rubber castors for the sofas so you can move them around for visitors.
small side tables near each sofa, fluffy pot plant on each with a small lamp.

Layout one is OK, but I'd swap the TV and brown sofa around.


At the very least, that TV storage thing has to go.



Domestic bliss pro-tip:
1st, leave a small space in the corner.
in 30 seconds time wife/gf will feel the overwhelming need to "decorate"

they will disappear and then return with a glass vase with twigs in it, put this in the reserved space.

do not let them add any more crap into the room

 

[Gambisk]

yeah I'm not a big fan of the side board, but the wife loves it, so could have a fight on my hands.

TBH I'm not overly convinced on most of the furniture as it was all bought to fit a realtively awkward room in our old house. I'd be tempted to start over and maybe go for some sort of corner sofa on the kitchen and joining wall and mount the TV on the short wall.

Edit: Plot twist: the short wall is a rats nest of wires as the main circuit breaker in the bathroom on the other side, its also a stud wall so not sure if its suitable for tv mounting

 

[bitslice]

Corner sofas are pretty much the ideal solution for rooms like this.


Get the wife to look at other people's TV arrangements, I reckon none of them will have their TV on a sideboard.
They weren't designed for that, at most they are for a few pictures, a plant and a candlestick.

If you point at them in magazines often enough, she'll suddenly decide it isn't working.

 

[a1ex2001]

1st.
Consider why you have so much storage in a living room, does any of it need to be in that exact room, all of the time.

TV's should be at eye level, not raised up on a sideboard

ditch the wooden coffee table and get one with a central glass pane, visually they take up less space. Although consider if you really need one there all the time.

All that crap on the table right now (flowers, candles, mini house, pictures, tissues)
THROW IT ALL AWAY
If your eye is drawn to piles of clutter, then everything looks tiny

Get a rug, the room then has a visual centre.


Layout.
Mount the TV on the short wall between the two doors.
Put matching lamps or uplighters either side of it

Put the two sofas in the opposite corners, at an angle.
Put a floor mounted reading lamp behind each sofa

Get some rubber castors for the sofas so you can move them around for visitors.
small side tables near each sofa, fluffy pot plant on each with a small lamp.

Layout one is OK, but I'd swap the TV and brown sofa around.


At the very least, that TV storage thing has to go.



Domestic bliss pro-tip:
1st, leave a small space in the corner.
in 30 seconds time wife/gf will feel the overwhelming need to "decorate"

they will disappear and then return with a glass vase with twigs in it, put this in the reserved space.

do not let them add any more crap into the room

harsh but pretty fair!

 

[Gambisk]

This room is a bit of a dumping ground at the minute with stuff just set on whatever flat surfaces we can find, hence all the crap on the coffee table, that will go. I fully agree that the sideboard isn't a good idea and will be campaigning to replace it or remove it completely, at the very least the TV won't be sitting on it.

I'm not a fan of arranging the whole room around the TV as we only watch it occasionally, but I don't want to break my neck looking round when we do watch it. How feasible is it to mount the tv on a stud wall?

 

[bitslice]

harsh but pretty fair!

I know, I always sound really really bossy in threads like this
But I just imagine I'm talking to myself or something

How feasible is it to mount the tv on a stud wall?

You could dangle yourself from a screw in a batten, 95% of the force is straight down. Pragmatically you only need to do more in case someone yanks at it.

For a TV that size, hollow wall anchors would be OK. Aim to get two screws into a stud.
Personally I'd cut a section of plasterboard out and add horizontal noggins in between the battens and screw into those.
Other people have used expanding bolts driven right back into the thermalbrick


-

 

[Ace Modder]

Interesting, I have this dilemma when I move house in 2 weeks myself.

This is my new living room - not my furniture, this is the current owners photos.

and the rest of the lounge is here

Both pics were taken by the photogrpaher not moving at all.

I really dislike where the current TV is, I have a 3 seater sofa and a 1 seater chair. My TV is currently sat on our bay windows currently, so we dont have a TV stand in our current house we are about to move out of.

No idea how I'm going to lay out the lounge when I move.

 

[Trifid]

I also suffered this dilemma. I made a to scale plan on photoshop and moved the furniture around on different layers until I got something I was happy with. Unfortunately it also meant dumping the perfectly serviceable arm chairs I had for an expensive corner sofa that fitted the space perfectly.

 

[HangTime]

Personally I'd look at putting one of the sofas in front of the window (probably have to be the smaller one I guess to avoid blocking the door). I think that would help in terms of using that area of the room, although it might block a small amount of light depending on window height, and potentially might make the room as a whole seem a bit shorter (i.e. as though there is nothing to the right when you come in the Hall door). Some people probably don't like having seating facing away from the windows mind.
I think with the other sofa as per layout 1 you'd then get good viewing angles to the TV although distance from the window sofa might be an issue on a TV that small.

quite tight squeezing between the two sofas if we are going into the kitchen.

The 2nd layout is a neck breaker if we are watching TV

That was my immediate thoughts on both layouts. I hate that squeezing between furniture thing as it just makes the room feel uninviting the moment you come through the door, as you are hemmed into this tiny square of floor and not welcome any further.
I think you could probably solve that by moving the sofa further into the corner and shifting the TV unit towards the window a bit.

 

[roadie]

Surely the issue here is that the lounge is a hallway!