14 By 16 Living Room
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| I live in a "one room" house. By one room, I mean the downstairs is essentially one big open space consisting of a small foyer, a living space, a dining space, and a kitchen. I really need some ideas. ^^^ Here is the floor plan Last edited by IDamateur; 09-04-2012 at 10:48 AM.. |
09-04-2012, 10:37 AM 
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| Welcome. I did a very rough furniture layout mockup. Keep in mind I viewed your picture, copy/pasted, and edited all in the span of about 10 mins because that's about all I had time for but maybe it will help you in some way. The colors I used don't really mean much other than to help things to stand out from each other. However, in general the grey blocks are rugs, the green is lounge-type furniture, the red are bar stools, the brown is dining furniture, the light green are side tables and coffee tables, and the royal blue is a TV. The teal color is an entire feature wall of storage and entertainment center type stuff, the tan is a long, low console type table for the entry-way, and the purple is a bookshelf in the entry reading nook. Also, a big important thing to point out is that, because I didn't have much time to respond, I broke a big rule of mine which is that I would normally always scale furniture for you since you provided a scaled layout. What I laid out is not scaled in any way at all so it is entirely possible that all this furniture wouldn't even fit. I recommend using a CAD program or Google SketchUp or something to actually sketch it out to scale to help you further once you start getting some ideas of what you would like to do. Hopefully this at least provides some inspiration or something though! |
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| Here are some things to think about when you are designing a living space. Leave paths open. Its maddening to have to walk around furniture to get to a destination, like the front door. You can't always leave perfect paths through your rooms, but try to allow for good flow between doorways. Put tables between chairs or on one side of them. Find a focal point in your room and arrange a conversational grouping around the focal point. If the room lacks a fireplace, which is a traditional focal point, create one with a piece of art or grouping. Put your sofas and chairs close enough together for conversation. Put your electronics in a designated place--you can refit a closet, or put a desk away from the living area in some way. Keep your laptop and other electronics there whenever possible. Try not to line up your furniture along the walls Bring it out to form "rooms" or specific functional areas. If you are designing a vaulted space, pay attention to any horizontal "lines" formed by the tops of doorways or windows or bookshelves. Imagine a line stretched along the tops and align bookshelves along that line. Hang things in relation to those "lines", that is above or below with one or two things overlapping the "line' for interest. In general hang art over furniture, not floated out over nothing. But that rule can be broken from time to time, IMO. I learned a lot from reading decorating books and poring over decorating magazines. Fixing your space to suit your taste is a great experience, even if you can't do everything all at once. Good luck and have fun. |
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| Quote: Originally Posted by silibran Here are some things to think about when you are designing a living space. Leave paths open. Its maddening to have to walk around furniture to get to a destination, like the front door. You can't always leave perfect paths through your rooms, but try to allow for good flow between doorways. Put tables between chairs or on one side of them. Find a focal point in your room and arrange a conversational grouping around the focal point. If the room lacks a fireplace, which is a traditional focal point, create one with a piece of art or grouping. Put your sofas and chairs close enough together for conversation. Put your electronics in a designated place--you can refit a closet, or put a desk away from the living area in some way. Keep your laptop and other electronics there whenever possible. Try not to line up your furniture along the walls Bring it out to form "rooms" or specific functional areas. If you are designing a vaulted space, pay attention to any horizontal "lines" formed by the tops of doorways or windows or bookshelves. Imagine a line stretched along the tops and align bookshelves along that line. Hang things in relation to those "lines", that is above or below with one or two things overlapping the "line' for interest. In general hang art over furniture, not floated out over nothing. But that rule can be broken from time to time, IMO. I learned a lot from reading decorating books and poring over decorating magazines. Fixing your space to suit your taste is a great experience, even if you can't do everything all at once. Good luck and have fun. These are very good tips! The only point that I might not work in this situation is the idea of floating the furniture away from the walls. 14x16 is a fairly small living room. In small spaces its often better to anchor furniture to at least one wall, which will open up the room. Floating it in is best for large open spaces. In smaller rooms, it actually cramps things up and you don't have enough room to create a path between objects. You can also use an area rugs to help define a space. Major traffic paths should be 36" and lower traffic paths should be 24" ideally. I like the idea given by the first responder with the L shaped sofa, but that scale is way off. Based on the sketch, the sofa they gave you is about 70" x 24". Realistically, an L sofa will be at least 90" long and a minimum of 36" deep. You can do that and add one occasional chair to the room. Below is an example. This is my own living room in a 650SF condo I owned a few years back. The first image, I floated the furniture, though in that 12 x 15 room, it was still on the walls. I was always tripping over things, it was a pain to walk around it. In the second image, after I staged it, I removed one of the chairs and an end table, and had space left over to add an armoire and two book cases! Also, think about multifunctional furniture, scale and mass. Scale and Mass: Visual space under furniture, such as a sofa with legs and no skirt, will make the room feel more open. Chunky, cube shaped sofa that go to the floor will make the room feel smaller and give you less room to maneuver. Massive Restoration Hardware type sofas will simply eat up all your space. Adding storage items that don't add mass. For instance, use a coffee table for storage. But beware of mass. A trunk will be visually heavy in the room where as leg table with baskets underneath will feel lighter and open up the space. Other multifunctional pieces include an occasional chair that can function as a dining chair as needed. A dining table that can be extended for special occasions, but takes up less space otherwise. Last edited by TheWayISeeThings; 09-05-2012 at 07:17 AM.. |
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| Quote: Originally Posted by TheWayISeeThings Major traffic paths should be 36" and lower traffic paths should be 24" ideally. I like the idea given by the first responder with the L shaped sofa, but that scale is way off. Based on the sketch, the sofa they gave you is about 70" x 24". Realistically, an L sofa will be at least 90" long and a minimum of 36" deep. You can do that and add one occasional chair to the room. Yeah I apologize, given the dimensions, what I laid out obviously would not fit as planned. I had to kind of cover my eyes and ignore the scale because I didn't have much time to actually scale out the furniture. In reality I do think a sofa with a chaise on the side of the room I placed the sofa would keep the room opened. I think that, with the right scale (iow not my actual sketch), the dining table and the bar stool idea would work out just fine too, especially if the bar stools could be pushed underneath the overhang of the bar some when not in use. The other items I showed like the conversation / game table in the living room and the reading nook in the entry most likely will not work in the actual scaled room this poster provided, but I wanted to just kind of show how you can create some different areas within an "open" floor plan like this. Keep the ideas coming. Hopefully we're giving the OP some food for thought |
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| I would not try to fit into that space a dining room table with 4 or 6 chairs. Since there is no wall between the living and dining areas and that is all one big space, I would treat it as one big room. Why not have groupings of chairs, a small buffet or chest or side table or maybe a small couch? Have just enough furniture to accommodate your daily needs and the needs of a friend or two that might drop by. Don't cram every inch with furniture. Why have a dining table at all? Could you use the counter between the dining area and kitchen as an eating area with stools? If not, how about a small drop leaf table that you could slide against the wall instead of taking up space in the middle of the room? If you had friends over, could you serve buffet from the counter and use the rest of the space as living space with book shelves and seating groupings? This arrangement would open up the space and make it more inviting, livable and open. How many times would you really need a dining table or would you even need a dining table? Maximize the space you have for practical daily use in the way that you live - that fits your needs. Analyze how you live and arrange the space accordingly instead of taking up a good deal of the space with a dining table and chairs or other pieces of furniture that don't fit your lifestyle or needs. Last edited by Cattknap; 09-07-2012 at 05:34 AM.. |
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| The general idea of the furniture layout is good, but there are 3 spaces in that small space for "eating". I would eliminate the table in the living room area. I would get a table for the dining area that expands but is only 4 chairs otherwise. There are several on the market that self-store leaves that will extend out to seat 8-10 people but collapse down to seating for 4. For the living room, use the space. Remove the table and put in a large sectional or 2 couches with 2 chairs or even 3 couches if they fit. Arrange them in a U-shape centered on the TV on that end wall. I would also put some coat racks and shelves in the garage by the back door or you will end up with a pile of shoes in your kitchen |
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| Quote: Originally Posted by Cattknap I would not try to fit into that space a dining room table with 4 or 6 chairs. Since there is no wall between the living and dining areas and that is all one big space, I would treat it as one big room. Why not have groupings of chairs, a small buffet or chest or side table or maybe a small couch? Have just enough furniture to accommodate your daily needs and the needs of a friend or two that might drop by. Don't cram every inch with furniture. Why have a dining table at all? Could you use the counter between the dining area and kitchen as an eating area with stools? If not, how about a small drop leaf table that you could slide against the wall instead of taking up space in the middle of the room? If you had friends over, could you serve buffet from the counter and use the rest of the space as living space with book shelves and seating groupings? This arrangement would open up the space and make it more inviting, livable and open. How many times would you really need a dining table or would you even need a dining table? Maximize the space you have for practical daily use in the way that you live - that fits your needs. Analyze how you live and arrange the space accordingly instead of taking up a good deal of the space with a dining table and chairs or other pieces of furniture that don't fit your lifestyle or needs. I like the thinking out of the box ideas like this. It seems like most everyone would put a dinning table in the dinning room. Keep in mind the "nook" next to the dinning room has nothing in it. It is show with some shelf options, but it is just open space. |
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| Here is how I have it set up right now, which is pretty standard, and it seems like everyone does it like this to some degree or another.... Here is what I was thinking about going to... I think this brings my "bar space" into my "living space". It also gives me another sitting area, where two groups of people can hang out, and not always have to be together. |
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| I'm not personally a big fan of that, however there is nothing extremely WRONG with that so it's not like I hate it and if you like it then by all means try it I just feel like it just kind of squishes your living space. If you don't use the dining table that much, it forces you and your guests into one small portion of your house while the corner with the dining table doesn't get used much. I personally wouldn't advise separating the dining table from the kitchen with a living area, I think it just feels awkward and I actually think it CLOSES your space as opposed to opening it like someone else suggested. Having your dining table where it is now makes your kind of space feel the most open to me and that is how I would do it. I would treat it as one big room and use rugs to define the spaces, but leave your stuff mainly where it is /shrug |
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