Wednesday, June 28, 2000

©2000 San Francisco Chronicle

Question: My dilemma involves better light, furniture placement, fireplace mantel decoration and what size rug to buy. The living room is 27 feet, 3 inches long and 16 feet, 10 inches wide. The mantel is 69 inches wide and 66 inches high.

Ethel Richardson Vallejo

Answer: Placing furniture in a long room is a challenge designers love to sink their teeth into, but first it's important to ask a basic question: "What is the primary purpose of the room?"

An objective gives focus, purpose and direction to solving any design dilemma and is a prerequisite for anyone, professional designer or not, to achieve a successful result. Having said that, we can start solving your dilemma.

From your photographs, the furniture appears formal and it seems that the room is used primarily for entertaining. Using this assumption, let's redesign the space to make it a more comfortable living room for this purpose.

With the objective defined -- a room in which to entertain -- let's break this dilemma down into its various parts in order of importance: spatial planning, light and the acquisition of new pieces.

All these aspects, but not necessarily in that order, will be addressed. It'll seem that we're jumping around, but there's a logic that will become self-evident along the way, so hang in there!

Lighting is a critical element of any room, and will make or break a good design plan. But the actual lighting for this room is less important at this stage than another, more obvious problem.

It appears that the floor and ceiling are both dark brown. To make the room appear lighter, the first thing I recommend is to paint the ceiling, beams and all, white. The room will appear less linear since the dark beams that run lengthwise will be softened. Resist the temptation to leave the beams dark as this will only enhance the feature of the room that we want to minimize -- its length.

Now we can move on to the next aspect, spatial planning. With the ceiling lightened the whole room will seem more spacious. And, in what sounds like a contradiction, we have the opportunity to obviate the illusion of spaciousness and make it more intimate and conducive to conversation with furniture placement.

Defining the areas where furniture will be placed becomes the job of area rugs. Since the room is large, and now appears even more so with the white ceiling. More than one area rug can be used to delineate several seating areas. But before you decide what rugs you need and how large they should be, you need to decide what the seating areas will be. See what I meant about "jumping around?"

Remember that the purpose of this room is entertaining, so seating that encourages conversation is the objective. Since this is such a large room, having more than one conversation group is a viable option. With that in mind, we're ready to think about your furniture's placement. Moving furniture around is the simplest, easiest, fastest way to significantly change any room. And, any change you make and don't like can easily be undone.

Since the fireplace is the focal point of the room, it becomes an obvious place to put the main conversation area. Move the large, comfortable sofa perpendicular to the fireplace and your two comfortable chairs opposite the sofa. Don't jam the furniture up against the walls, but rather "float" them a few feet away from the walls. We've now defined one area where a 9-by-12 rug can delineate the space. A square coffee table between them, in front of the fireplace, finishes the furniture placement of this part of the room.

The mantel enhances the focal aspect of the fireplace and at the same time gives us the opportunity to create an optical illusion. Because the room is long and narrow, we want to make it appear wider. By putting a mirror horizontally rather than vertically we can create the illusion of width rather than height and offset the feeling of length one gets from the doorway. Use larger lamps on the consoles that are on either side of the fireplace to anchor the room with light and again, enhance the illusion of width.

Another smaller seating area can be strategically placed on the other side of the room on what appears to be the west wall. Use your love seat and its companion chairs to make an intimate arrangement of furniture. A 5-by-7 or 6-by-8 area rug for the seating area helps define it. Use the small side table and chairs on the opposite wall to balance the room.

To add cohesiveness to the room accessories should be added that incorporate the dominant colors in your upholstered furniture. In this case it's the salmon velvet of the love seat and the yellow of your sofa. Choose several complementary fabrics that include these colors in both solid and patterns or stripes, and have throw pillows made to mix and match in both seating areas.

For the final decorative touch, add a few large plants with small hidden "up" lights below for texture and fresh, seasonal flowers for color. Now the room is transformed into a balanced, appealing space that encourages lively conversation for your family and guests to enjoy.

 

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