Question: I've been struggling with my living and dining room area for the past 10 years and can't seem to come up with any other furniture arrangement. My desire has been to get a longer sofa and put it facing the fireplace. I prefer a homey look but the way it looks now is very crowded and formal. There are several openings for doors and windows that add to the problem of furniture placement. Can you help?

Gayle Ostrus
Los Altos

Answer:The floor plan of your living-dining room is indeed challenging; windows and doors everywhere make it hard to figure out where to put furniture that's large enough to be comfortable for taking naps and providing seating.

The largest piece of furniture in a living room is usually the sofa. Your desire for one big enough to stretch out on and take a mid-day snooze means it should be 6 to 7 feet long. In my floor plan, I've indicated that the sofa should be an armless sectional, 7 feet long, placed perpendicular to the fireplace. One portion placed nearby serves as an ottoman. This provides a comfortable place where you can stretch out and enough seating for several guests. In a pinch, the ottoman can be a "floating" seat, moved to wherever needed.

Cleaning up a crowded room The long sectional sofa is ideal for relaxation or conversation. The oval-shaped dining table can be extended for guests.

Facing the sectional is a club chair, positioned on an angle for ease of conversation. The coffee table is round and 36 inches in diameter. Not having the hard edges of a square table makes it easier to move around in this tight space. In front of the large picture window are your two blue velvet club chairs. They're lovely pieces and can easily be incorporated into your new layout. Between them is a 24-inch-diameter round table to provide a convenient place to put a beverage or plate. Next, the dining area. I've replaced your small, square table with an oval dining table that's 6 feet long by 30 inches wide. It seats six comfortably, and would have a leaf to expand for additional guests. Two more dining chairs are placed on either side of your buffet console. Your china hutch stays where it is near the doorway. This new layout addresses your objectives for furniture placement. To make a space feel calm and inviting, give the eye a place to rest. In a room with a lot of small pieces, knickknacks and tchotchkes, the eye doesn't know what to focus on and moves around a lot, making one feel restless and uneasy. The solution is to eliminate the clutter; take it away or put it in a display that's more like a collection than clutter. I like to call these groupings "visual oases" in which to rest.

Scale is also an important factor in making a room feel calm. Again, small pieces in a large room can be visually jarring. Fewer, but larger pieces, or the illusion of them being larger, fill the space nicely without giving the sense of clutter.

If you have a lot of small pieces of art, for example, instead of sprinkling them around the room, put them together on one wall. The eye can focus on the whole rather than the parts, and enjoys the presentation more.

To finish making this room feel homey, let's address the color palette. Painting walls is the easiest, least expensive way to make a big difference in the feeling of a room. Since we're keeping the blue chairs but acquiring a new sofa, let's work with the blue you have.

There are two approaches we can take with color: tonal or complementary. If we want a tonal approach, the walls should be painted in the blue family and the new sectional would be another, deeper tone of blue. If we want to take a complementary color approach, the walls would be in the caramel, cafe au lait, beige/brown family and the sectional would be in either the blue or caramel family. Throw pillows and other accessories that pick up the opposite color tie it all together.

Use warm woods for the dining and coffee tables in either case, as both palettes will benefit from their warm tones.

Window treatments made of textured, warm fabrics will frame the whole effect and unite the room. They should be in the same color family as the walls to keep the feeling calm.

Good lighting and a well-placed, large plant add drama and give the finishing touch for creating the coziness you crave.

 

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