SAMANTHA PYNN
A distraction is required for open front room.
Winter coats should not be the focus of attention from the living room to the open hallway
Dear Sam,
I am having the worst time arranging furniture in the smallest living room. As soon as you walk in the front door of our town home, you are in the living room. You can basically take your shoes off in our living room, which is to the right of our front door. There is a small half-wall that barely separates the front door and the front window.
Is it odd to have the sofa facing the front entry? You can hardly call it an entry, but the place where we will keep our coats and shoes this winter. There isn’t a closet until you walk further inside, down a set of stairs to the landing, but we just installed hooks for our coats at the front door.
I’d prefer to have the sofa under the window beside the front door — four feet away to be precise — but it just fits and I was feeling it looked overcrowded. Please let me know, Chris
Dear Chris,
Your small living room layout is pretty common. Do put your sofa under the window. You definitely don’t want to be staring at coats and shoes when you are sitting on the sofa. For me, staring at a mess is a total serenity buster.
The reason you are having trouble arranging furniture is that the living room wall that faces your entryway will often have a forced focal point such as a fireplace with two small windows on either side. You’ve probably seen this type of layout — it’s pretty common in older homes.
You could put a narrow faux mantel or an electric fireplace on the wall to create a forced focal point. But a narrow sideboard or console table will also do the trick. Plus, if you paint the console table the same colour as your wall, it will camouflage, giving you a focal point without making the room feel overloaded with furniture.
Another option is to create an art wall from the floor to ceiling, so you’ll have something beautiful to look at when you walk through the front door. And, last, you can copy what we did on Open House Overhaul and use a clear glass or acrylic console table with two lamps and art. Clear furniture doesn’t take up any visual space and will always give a room more open and airy feeling. Be sure to keep clutter to a minimum on clear glass furniture or on any furniture in a small space. Clutter makes a room feel smaller. A tray to corral loose objects, a couple of books or larger objet d’art such as a bowl or vase is sufficient.
But let’s go back to those hooks at the front door. If your closet is less than 15 steps from the front door, consider taking down those hooks. I have a hunch that your closet is meant to be the place to keep your coats. Too many coats on too few hooks means that your coats will constantly be falling on the melted snow from your boats below, which is more of an inconvenience than walking them to the closet. Happy furniture arranging! Sam