How to arrange your living room furniture

Where the living room was once a room reserved for receiving guests, to be kept spic and span and certainly not a room for children to cavort and make a mess, its role is now one that encompasses so much more — but arranging furniture in the right way can make this space work on many different levels.

A Multi-Use Space

The living room means different things to different households. However, it is now more common than not for the living room be seen as much more than room reserved for end-of-the-day relaxing. It is a space that the whole family needs to be able to enjoy, a TV room, a playroom for younger children and even a workspace, as well as somewhere to entertain guests.

You really don’t need a vast space in order to accommodate all of these uses, but making the right choices when it comes to living room furniture designs and in your furniture placement is vital.

It helps to view your space in ‘zones’ if you can. Breaking up the room into areas for watching television, another for quiet reading or conversation and a separate space for working or toys means that each use should not encroach on the other.

Great ideas for living room furniture designs that help with zoning include sectional sofas, console tables, storage units (models on castors are ideal if you want your layout to be flexible) and long, low coffee tables.

A console table behind the sofa can double up as a desk, whilst pendant lighting over a coffee table draws people towards this sociable area

Multi-Use Furniture

In multi-use living rooms, multi-use furniture is a must. This includes living room furniture designs such as coffee tables with storage, perhaps in the form of glass shelving, footstools with lift up lids, workstations or bureaus that can be closed up when the working day is done and consoles which have drawers for remote controls etc. and space for toy baskets beneath.

Long low coffee tables can also work as visual room dividers — choose one like the ZeStretch Long Hoop Table from Zespoke that offers storage too

Television Placement

Whether we like it or not, the television plays a huge role in living room and also has a big impact on your furniture placement options. Whilst it makes sense to place your TV somewhere fairly prominent in the room, you might want to consider arranging some seating and side tables facing away from it too in order to create a space dedicated to other pursuits, such as reading, playing games or just good old-fashioned conversation.

Avoid arranging furniture so that it all faces the television and try to create separate areas using sofas pointing in opposite directions

The Right Lighting and Flooring

Getting your lighting right in the living room is essential and goes hand-in-hand with arranging furniture in the right way — a comfy armchair tucked away in a cosy corner is great — place a reading lamp next to it and it is even better.

Likewise, modern furniture, such as a sectional sofa with clean lines, is the perfect pairing with a floorstanding arc-style lamp.

The right lighting can also help towards defining areas — for example, background lighting in the form of recessed downlighters set on dimmer switches are perfect in areas that you spend the most time, whilst table and floor lamps cosy things up. Consider using hidden LED lighting behind shelving and under modern furniture to create interest and wow.

Similarly, changing your flooring material to suit each individual zone is a great technique. Soft flooring such as a rug or carpet in the seating area, wooden or stone in the more practical spaces, such as where the children play or have snacks.

Using flooring to define ‘comfy’ areas and more practical space is a great idea, whilst an angled or arc-shaped floor lamp will set-off a sectional sofa perfectly