Living Room Furniture Layout

Arranging living room furniture can either give your living room a cluttered or overstuffed look or a comfortable and homely feel. Since it is the most integral part of our home, living room decoration requires time and lot of thoughtfulness. Arranging furniture in the living room without any proper furniture layout can be like completing a jigsaw puzzle. Though, we usually have a layout in our mind, most of the time it doesn't come out the way we have thought. Therefore, there are some decorating ideas for a living room that need to be considered before you begin with your living room furniture layout. In most of the cases, entrances to all other rooms are located in the living room, so there should be sufficient circulation space for the family members. Since, most of the furniture items in the room will revolve around a focal point that will invite people to gather and stay, seating for many people should be the primary point to be considered, while everything else can be secondary. Here are a few living room designs and ideas to help you get started on making a truly unique and stunning living room layout.

Living Room Furniture Ideas

Following are some simple ideas that will help you to create a living room that will give a unique and classic look to your living room.

• Measure the room and draw an outline of the room on graph paper using a scale of ¼ in to 1 ft. Mark where and how many windows and doors are located in the living room, their size, the height of the windowsills, and the distance between the windows and the doors. Also note down the location of the cable and light switches, electrical points and outlets, and telephone points in the living room.
• Select a focal point of the living room and arrange the furniture and lighting according to it. Some of the common focal points can be a window opening out to a garden, a fireplace, a bookcase, a home theater system, etc.
• You can also make one of the corners of the living room as the focal point by keeping a tabletop waterfall, beautiful lamp, or other decorative pieces at that corner with some lighting to highlight it.
• To establish conversation areas, there has to be at least 4 to 10 ft of space between the sofa and chairs, so that your guests can talk to each other comfortably. If the space between the sofa and chairs is less than 4 feet, the room will look too cramped and if the distance is more than 10 feet, it will be difficult for people to communicate. Make sure the legroom between the sofa and the coffee table is at least 14 to 18 inches.
• Pathways should be 2 to 3 feet wide so that you can walk comfortably in the living room without hitting or stumbling on furniture.
• In small apartment living rooms having space restraints, the entertainment center, like a TV should be placed in such a position so that the remaining furniture can be set around it. The sofa can be placed exactly opposite to the TV and two chairs on the both sides of the sofa will give a uniform look to the room.
• For small living rooms, don't use heavy cabinets and sleek metallic chairs together. A low table against a high back chair with a long piece of art work will give a balanced look to your living room.

Try keeping the number of furniture pieces in your living room low to avoid a congested or stuffy look. You can keep two loveseats opposing each other in place of four chairs, or one sofa and two chairs in place of one loveseat and three or more chairs. Though living room furniture arrangement can be a bit challenging, by keeping the above points in your mind you can surely give a new and beautiful look to your living room, that too without wasting much of your time and money.