How to Set Up Your Living Room (Without a Focus on the TV)

Posted in Angelcityfurniture

These days, we tend to arrange living rooms with one thing in mind: making sure everyone can see the TV. But what’s ideal for television watching is often less than ideal for another time-honored living room pastime: conversation. In this post, I’m focusing on living room arrangements that are less amphitheater, and more intimate, cozy spots where you can have a lovely fireside chat (and maybe also fit a television, too).

A really elegant, and simple, way to create a conversational grouping is with two sofas positioned to face each other. In this room from Hus & Hem via Planete Deco , both the fire and the closeness of the seating create a feeling of cozy comfort. (This room could still function for TV watching, too, provided you’re willing to mount the TV over the fireplace.)

One way to make this work in a narrower living room is by placing a bench across from a full-sized sofa, as seen in this interior from Ash NYC .

This space from Libertyn Interiors demonstrates a slight twist on the two-sofas look: a sofa placed across from two armchairs. This is a bit of a lighter look, and allows more opportunities for circulating through the room.

I love this living room from One Kings Lane , which demonstrates how you can make a seating area focused on conversation work in a smaller living room— and have a TV, too. The two chairs placed opposite the sofa allow visitors to sit face-to-face with their host, but are low-backed so as not to block the TV behind.

This California apartment isn’t particularly large at around 800 square feet, but the living room still manages to squeeze in quite a bit of seating, grouped cozily into a nice conversational circle.

A setup like the one seen in the living room of this Cape Town home , with two armchairs arranged at right angles to the sofa, allows for conversation but could also allow for a television too (perched on a console placed parallel to the sofa).

The living room of this Los Angeles home displays a bit of a variation on the above, with one chair to the right of the sofa and one across from it.

If you regularly host a lot of people (or just have a very large family), you could try a setup like this one from Nordic Design , where three different sofas form a cozy ‘U’.

The deep leather armchairs in this living room from Elle Decor look like an ideal place for a cozy chat.

In the Manhattan apartment of David Coggins, spotted on the Bonobos blog , two leather armchairs, grouped around the fireplace, make a cozy spot for conversation.

This library from Domino has a similar setup. This would make a great solution for small spaces where there just isn’t room for a full-sized sofa. Sitting next to someone on a loveseat can be an awkward position for conversation, but two chairs angled to face each other is perfect for a tête-à-tête.

In this room from Lisa Sherry Interieurs , via Planete Deco two chairs placed opposite each other form a cozy conversational nook, separate from the rest of the room’s seating. This is a possible solution for a room that’s just a little on the large side, where a single conversational grouping would seem small and lost.