Top 5 Tips On How to Arrange Your Family Room Furniture

Have you ever struggled with arranging your furniture?? Sometimes it just never feels right when you create your furniture layout. This seems to be the case especially here in New England where the rooms tend to be bigger in new homes or oddly shaped in the older homes. Arranging furniture in your living room or family room can be confusing, but you still want it to feel comfortable and inviting! So, here are 5 simple tips on how to arrange your family/living room furniture.

1. Choose a FOCAL POINT

Whether it’s your tv, a fireplace or even a window with a beautiful view, choose what you’d like to be the focal point of the room. Once you’ve decided on your focal point, you want your furniture arrangement to be facing that. People sometimes struggle with whether the focal point should be the tv or the fireplace. I say it can be both!

If you want the fireplace AND the tv to be focal points, you do have a few options. You can hang your tv above your fireplace.

You can arrange your furniture facing each other and have the fireplace at one end and the tv at the other.

Or, you can place your tv right next to the fireplace so that the furniture can be facing both of them.

2. Arrange your furniture in CONVERSATIONAL GROUPS.

You always want people to be able to sit on your furniture and to be able to comfortably speak to each other without yelling. Place your furniture so that it faces each other and is close enough to each other so that people on the sofa can chat with someone in the chair.

If need be you CAN, pull furniture in and away from the wall. You can always add a sofa table between the sofa and the wall if need be. And, an area rug can anchor the furniture in a seating arrangement. I always joke that the furniture is “under arrest” when it’s all up against the walls. No one wants to be under arrest. LOL

Pro tip: If you are trying to figure out what size area rug to buy, there’s an ebook for that HERE.

3. BREAK UP a long, narrow room

If you have a long narrow room you’ll need to create two or three seating areas, depending on the length of the room. Create a tv viewing arrangement at one end and then maybe a reading area at the other, or a game playing area at the other end. You can anchor each space with an area rug. If you need to figure out what size area rug to buy, click HERE to read a blog we wrote that will help in addition to the ebook that we linked above.

If you need more help with this there happens to be a full ebook on how to break up a long narrow room. Click HERE.

4. You need a COFFEE TABLE!

I can’t tell you how many houses I go into that don’t have a coffee table. I’ve asked them why and their answers are usually either they didn’t think of it, or that it seems too crowded with a coffee table, or they’re worried about their kids hurting themselves on it. So, I’m telling you. You need a coffee table! BUT, that coffee table needs to be the right size! It can’t be too big or too small because otherwise it will look off. A coffee table helps to create that conversation area. It should be 18-24” from the front of your furniture. Check out this blog that we did a while back on how to buy the right size coffee table HERE. Spoiler alert, the coffee table should be the height of your sofa cushions or 1-2” lower and the ideal length for your coffee table is 2/3 the length of your sofa. If you’re concerned about safety with kids choose a round or upholstered coffee table.

5. FILL UP any overly obvious empty corners

Once you’ve arranged your furniture there may be a corner or two that are obviously too empty. Here are two things that you could do. One: If you have enough space you can place a chair and a little side table in the corner. It could become the perfect reading nook. This chair does not need to be close enough to the conversation area furniture arrangement. But, if it needs to be pulled in temporarily at any time it can be. Two: tall plants always come in handy! They fill up empty corners. AND, they add texture and life.

If you still need some help putting your room together you can pick up our eBook on arranging furniture– HERE. Or feel free to give us a call or book a consultation HERE! Did you know that we’ve even moved furniture during the Consult? If we can help you with it on the spot then we will!

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