Living rooms are the conversation and formal entertainment headquarters of a home. Too often, however, this room becomes reduced to a dysfunctional, uncomfortable room in which few in the family truly spend their time. A long living room can make design plans especially difficult, but there are ways to think outside of the box in terms of furniture arrangement, color choices and accessories that will save this space. Who knows, perhaps this long room will transform into a livable room after all!
Furniture Arrangement
Rental Decorating Digest, an online interior decorating forum, suggests using graph paper to draw a model of your room, and then cutting out shapes to represent each of your furniture pieces. Next, move the cut outs around on the graph paper until you find an arrangement that looks pleasing, uses the space to the best advantage, and creates at least one conversational area accommodating six people. If you want to combat the hallway look of furniture lining the living room walls, then it’s time to get brave and move those sofas and love seats away from the walls. Plan to create two conversational areas in your long room instead of just one. If you have a fireplace or television cabinet, one of these may become the focal point of that area. Don’t limit your placement to focus on a large armoire or fireplace, however, because this might trap you into placing furniture along the walls, creating that dreaded hallway affect. Instead, try this tip: take your sofa and “float” it in the middle of the room with your love seat or additional chairs directly across from it, and place an area rug on the floor between them. A coffee table can sit on the rug in the center, with a television cabinet to the left or right of the cluster beside the seating arrangement instead of across from one sofa or the other. Using this method, a fireplace or picture window may be behind a sofa or love seat. Don’t worry about this; you actually have created a new way to utilize previously dead space in your long room. Now you will notice traffic flow is directed behind the sofa, between your focal points. You can form a smaller conversational area using a couple of chairs, or a create a cozy reading nook beside the window or fireplace with one over-sized chair and table or lamp. Suddenly there is flow, inviting areas to communicate, and space to use instead of just walk through.
Color
Lucius Moody, design student for HGTV.com, tackled a long living room design challenge using color. The room included a wood-burning fireplace surrounded by white-washed brick that blended into the pale walls and was hidden behind a large chair at the end of an elongated room. By changing the surround to a molded river-rock look, and adding a fresh coat of beige paint to the walls, the river rock became an accessory that stood out behind a floating couch, and the overstuffed chair invited guests to sit rather than intimidating them with an awkward placement. A neutral or light wall color in a long living room will make the furniture and accessories stand out, enhancing the conversation areas and creating inviting, well-lit living spaces.
Lucius Moody, design student for HGTV.com, tackled a long living room design challenge using color. The room included a wood-burning fireplace surrounded by white-washed brick that blended into the pale walls and was hidden behind a large chair at the end of an elongated room. By changing the surround to a molded river-rock look, and adding a fresh coat of beige paint to the walls, the river rock became an accessory that stood out behind a floating couch, and the overstuffed chair invited guests to sit rather than intimidating them with an awkward placement. Neutral or light wall color in a long living room will make the furniture and accessories stand out, enhancing the conversation areas and creating inviting, well-lit living spaces.