I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again – “comfortable” living rooms are the hardest rooms to nail. Give me a bedroom any day (symmetrical design with a singular purpose) or a formal “meant to be pretty” living room – that’s fine! But a comfortable, practical, usable, and yet beautiful everyday living room is a challenge. Then add in five doorways, two focal points, and needing it to be a pass-through space, and you have yourself a recipe for marriage counseling because you will be arranging re-arranging for years to come (Brian got to flex his guns and good attitude on today’s video:)). Of course, some houses are easier – you walk into an entry, and on your left or right is a contained room, with 2-3 uninterrupted walls so you can throw a sofa + two chairs and call it done, knowing you have a separate family room. But not this lovely lady – she is HARD. So let’s recap my needs/wants (which are all pretty intuitive, but here they are for the readers in the back):
- Comfortable where almost every chair is desired.
- Not overly eclectic – on the simpler side (ha). I love eclectic design in photos, but for our real life which is really busy here, I want my eye to be able to settle easily in the room and not be overstimulated.
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The good news is that we don’t need to watch TV or necessarily need storage in here either. We are lucky that it’s big – but long is always a challenge and big living rooms are harder to design.
