Living room furniture / tv arrangement

NewShadow

danlightbulb said:

Thanks that does seem nice, and would be light with the double french doors. Almost like a garden room. I guess it depends on how I can configure the front living room around the large screen tv.

Sorry, I can't mock up the front room without dimensions for the depth and width of the bay/depth and width of the alcoves - but... given its shape and size it's basically a traditional family room. 

I'd probably pay someone to build bookcases into the alcoves, get some soft looking armchairs and two seaters, and either put the TV at eye level on the breast or on the wall at the foot of the bed. Nice rug and you're sorted  

danlightbulb

Yeah I'm unsure of the dimensions so its a bit tricky. My mock ups have it quite tight to fit a sofa in so that it is central to the chimney breast.

NewShadow

danlightbulb said:

Yeah I'm unsure of the dimensions so its a bit tricky. My mock ups have it quite tight to fit a sofa in so that it is central to the chimney breast.

If you're saying 4'6" as the breast - which seems a reasonable estimate - then a standard sofa frame is probably in the region of 6'6"... assuming you don't fancy a chesterfield!

That means you're overlapping the alcoves by around a foot on either side - which isn't the end of the world if you've got floor to ceiling bookcases behind the sofa or console tables which lift the surface above the height of the back. Really it depends on your taste and how you want the room to 'feel'. 

The other alternative is seating or a desk built directly into the bay - or one of those fancy units where the TV lifts up into the bay when you want to watch it 

 

Allowing for decent blinds, of course... 

danlightbulb

Wow, bit out of my league but impressive idea.
Is twin french doors in the back room definitely the way to go do you think? If so, then I'll hold off doing anything major in that room until I can get the cash together to have both done at the same time.
I could sort the front room first, and see if that works as intended, before making final decision about the back room.
My other option for the back room would be to put a pool table in it. I don't know if it would get used much if it was just seating with no tv.

Kim_kim

I like sofas opposite each other, so I would have one long sofa between the two windows & one opposite that.
i would put the tv over the fire place.
im not really a fan of sofas against walls, if you weren’t keeping the fireplace you could have one sofa sort of 4 foot out from where the sofa is (centred) & then a table between and another sofa opposite, you could mount the tv on the wall (you might get a little glare from the window) or on a tv table, but in same place. 

Kim_kim

Kim_kim said:

I like sofas opposite each other, so I would have one long sofa between the two windows & one opposite that.
i would put the tv over the fire place.
im not really a fan of sofas against walls, if you weren’t keeping the fireplace you could have one sofa sort of 4 foot out from where the sofa is (centred) & then a table between and another sofa opposite, you could mount the tv on the wall (you might get a little glare from the window) or on a tv table, but in same place. 

And your table the door end for both layouts.  

danlightbulb

Good quality tv viewing requires one to be face on to tv, not trying to view it with head constantly turned 90 degrees to one side. I just dont think my house (in fact most regular sized houses) are big enough to be able to have the layout you refer to. 

DCFC79

Ill be keeping an eye on the thread for some ideas when I get my room sorted.

Plom

This is so useful, I'm having the same sort of dilemma at the moment and decided I wasn't quite sure about having a sofa in front of a window... not sure why, maybe paranoia!

I'm going for a pool table because you can find some good ones on-line that double up as pool dining tables. It looks like you have the space too which was my main concern. I used an article written by Mancaves HQ to help me work out what space I need (the picture below is a screenshot from there and is for a 7ft pool table which I'm going for). You can find it if you search 'Mancaves HQ pool table size chart and room dimensions'. If you go for that option 1 you could fit it quite nicely in that space next to the fireplace. I'm jealous of the fireplace.

They have something on pool dining tables too. I'll probably go for one of those.

EmmyLou30

I'd have just double doors at the dining end (you'll never open them both and they're expensive vs a window and the radiator has to be somewhere not wasting wall space), then the sofa dividing the room facing the fireplace - remove the ugly thing and put the tv there. It's not sacrilege to remove something like that, it's not a gorgeous Victorian thing that needs preservation. You need to face the tv properly to watch it, no good pretending you live a life 99% of us don't and not having the tv as the biggest feature in the room! People are always trying to pretend they don't have tv as the main purpose of the lounge like they're better than other people and read books round the fire or something! 

We removed a nasty 1990's fireplace (chimney was thankfully on the outside of the house not intruding into the living space), bricked and plastered up the hole with an air vent fitted and the 50" tv is now there dead centre in the room. All the chairs and sofa have a good view of it and means we had wall space left over for a bookcase/storage unit. It was the only way the layout would work with any tv more than 30". Some people said as we had a real chimney we should get a log burner....but as I don't feel the cold, want to watch tv properly and knew I would never use it it wasn't even a consideration to keep it. We did what was right for us and most people probably wouldn't even know the fire had been there.