How much furniture is in your sitting room?

[user1477282676]

The reason I'm asking is because we've just moved house...we've left a small house and moved into a large one. The new house has two sitting rooms in addition to a large kitchen and a dining room.

I've realised that the two sitting rooms look empty even though they're quite small rooms.

One has a large sofa in it, a big, heavy bookshelf...tall one. It also has a desk and chair.

The other sitting room has a small sofa, a coffee table, a middle sized bookshelf....and that's all!

I don't go for a lot of ornaments but feel that perhaps this is why the rooms look sort of empty? What am I missing?

They both have open fireplaces and I'm planning to get nice rugs for both rooms...I also have some nice paintings to hang...will it look better then?

Two sofas, two standard lamps, toy box, arm chair, log burner.

Have you thought about using one room for something else? Playroom or study perhaps?

Front sitting room: sofa, two recliner arm chairs, monks bench (useful storage underneath), small ottoman (has storage underneath and top can reverse to be a single seat one way, table the other way), pouffe, three occasional tables, TV on cabinet, standard lamp, two small hanging shelves, large mirror, two pictures, two large family photos.

Back sitting room (sunny side of house) - sofa, two armchairs, two small coffee tables, chest of drawers (small lamp and radio/cd player on top), two large floor standing plants, two pictures, ornaments/vases on window sills.

Dining room just has extendable table, chairs, Welsh dresser, two shelves, family photos, pictures.

We have the same issue, we moved from a house with a normal sitting room to one which is absolutely massive (6m square!) so our furniture just looks a bit lost. We still haven't figured out what to do with it.

Do you have all your furniture against the walls? A lot of people just shove furniture to the extremities of the room as their default position, which can make the place look huge and empty as there's just a huge void of space between everything. If, however, you pull furniture away from the walls then you fill the space a bit more.

Also, like in the pictures I've attached, just because it's one room doesn't mean it has to be one "circle" of furniture, all facing each other - you can "zone" the room into different areas, just by the arrnagement of the furniture - a seating area for conversations and TV-watching; a work area with a desk or table for homework, paperwork, and art projects; a play area for the kids to liee on the floor and create with their toys and games

My sitting room has 2 x 2 seater sofas, 1x3 seater sofa, coffee table, 2 side tables, floor lamp, mirror, TV unit and TV, 2 smaller lamps. Photos on windowsills & mantle and couple of pictures on the wall

Charlie I mentioned in my previous post that we live having two sitting rooms. Married for years and love our own space. We visit one another

Melj our rooms are nowhere near that big sadly. It's a large house but that's because it was extended in the 30s...the living rooms are the original part and so a bit poky. The rest of the house, the only other original bit is the kitchen and the front bedroom.

The rest were tacked on and there's a big sunroom too at the back which I am currently ignoring!

I have a very long and fairly large sitting room with 2 seater sofa 3 seater sofa 2 armchairs a coffee table n tv unit
3 small round tables a shelf unit which has dvds on it
3 other shelf units which have pottery on
A few large floor standing plants
Believe it or not it still looks quite minimalist
There is a big empty space suitable for a table n chairs but I have a dining room attached to kitchen so don't need to use that

If your rooms are high ceilinged it can look odd to have low furniture, as if you're living in the bottom half of the space, so high backed sofas, pictures or paintings, curtains with pelmets, stuff like vases on top of your existing furniture will all help to re-proportion it.
And uplighters or standard lamps that point upwards are good, too.

This advice comes from furnishing (mostly second hand) a 5x5m room with ceilings 3.5m high. I put two large bookcase/TV cabinets, one around a piano, a high sofa with a large painting on the wall behind it, three armchairs, several high "occasional" tables, two sets of very tall patterned curtains on fancy brass rods, two uplighter lamps and a reading lamp and a fancy brass light fitting on a 1 metre chain. Oh, and a rug.

I'm very pleased with it.

Mine is very big (two rooms knocked into one and running the whole length of the house) at one end is the big dining table and a vitrine (those wooden glass fronted cabinets) then along one wall there's another vitrine, a low cabinet and then another vitrine, with the record player on. On the opposite wall is a sofa.

Then a little partial wall separating the two ends, another vitrine, a book case, a corner cabinet, another cabinet/bookcase and low cabinet plus two leather arm chairs. At the moment there's also all the music stuff taking up all the room - double bass, electric drums, keyboard and about a million bloody guitars

Ours:
Sitting room 1;
4 and 2 seater sofas, fireplace, lamp table, coffee table, TV with Netflix.
Sitting room 2;
3 seater sofa, big bean bag, TV with Now TV, Xbox etc, small coffee table.
Both have pictures on the wall and nice fat cushions

Two sofas.

But we do have lots of built in storage in the living room and a nice fireplace. I'm really surprised at how much everyone can fit. Very jealous of the person with a piano!

Too much! We we have 2 sofas, large coffee table, side table, TV unit, piano, Welsh dresser, large bookshelf, another half-height dresser, dining table and chairs (it's a lounge/diner), oh wait, another skinny bookshelf, 2 more small tables, a bench/toy storage thing, DD's kitchen - you can barely move in here!

Medium sized sitting room (large for the house; traditional two bed cottage);
One three seater sofa
One two seater sofa
A side table
A standing lamp
A dining table and 4 chairs
Two wooden CD/DVD racks
A wooden chest of drawers
37" TV
Doesn't really count I guess but the slate hearth for our wood burner is built up to about 4 inches and stands out into the room a little way

When I moved in, I added the lamp and various decorative things; canvases on the walls, a carved horse sculpture thing, books on the two built in shelf units, flowers in a vase on the table, that kind of thing. I think that's what makes it look more lived in! It was a bit of a boys' house before when it was my DP and his best friend's house! (worse because they are farm boys and contractors!)

I have an open plan living/dining room and have
Huge corner sofa
Standing lamp
Tv unit and tv
Dog bed by radiator
Toy boxes
Dining table and 6 chairs
Highchair
Big plant.
Rug.

Thisrabbitthatrabbit The piano was second hand, too! Sadly nowadays even good pianos are being sold for a song and it was cheaper to buy one than move our own. We did use a specialist mover with a very nifty "stair climbing" tank machine, though.

We don't have enough furniture in our living room do it feels quite sparse. It was fine in the smaller living room we had in our old house.

We have one 3-seater couch, a small media unit with a tv that's too big for it on the top, a coffee table with a rug underneath (we do need a bigger rug, I think), two armchairs with a small table between them with a lamp on it, and one standing lamp. We've got three big pictures on the wall. Oh and we have a 5.1 surround sound system so there are freestanding speakers in all 4 corners and a bloody subwoofer next to the tv.

We are planning to get a longer media unit and also a sideboard, and we need a table or cabinet to sit in one of the corners to house the router (which currently sits on the floor). We'll need to get some tat ornaments to sit on top of the sideboard too.

I really want a piano but yeah, they are expensive and then there's the upkeep so we've had to settle for the electric piano.

We also have a pretty much empty back sitting room at the moment. It contains a bookcase and a rug. Nothing else. We're going to need to buy quite a lot of furniture for it (when we can).

Oh and all the furniture is second hand, inherited or given for free - we are nowhere near well-off but good at getting lovely furniture for free or very cheap!

I have a smallish living room and I have one sofa, tv on a wooden unit given to me by a friend, two bookshelves and a CD unit

Not much room for anything else really

I have a fairly small but perfectly square front room. I have a big settee, a telly on a cabinet, two sets of bookshelves, a Poang, a small armchair, a little table and a lamp.

Summer sitting room - two x4 seater sofas, three leather armchairs, writing desk and chair, ottoman, BG piano, x2 side tables. Standard lamp.
Snug - three x4 seater sofas, a disgustingly large television, a huge central coffee table, a mountain of assorted floor cushions, side table, lamps open through to library area/study with built in bookcases, x2 desks with work chairs, x4 bucket chairs and small coffee table.

I have a sitting room and a dining room.

Sitting room has one big L shaped soda, one small secondary sofa, two freestanding lamps, three ornamental tables, one bonsai tree, one writing bureau, one antique tuck box, one chest, one leather pouffe, one book case and a stack of board games by the fire. Plus pictures and mirror on wall. It sounds cluttered but it's a huge room.

Dining room has dining table, chairs, book case, and two free standing lamps. And that's it.

we have

alcove 1 tv unit and built in shelves above
fireplace , picture above,
alcove 2 stereo unit and built in shelves above
rug with coffee table on
footstool
nest of tables with lamp on
bookcase
wall mirror
pictures on walls
3 and 2 seater sofa
storage trunk
large green plants

Ours is big. We have an open fire, 2 sofas, 2 bookcases, a sideboard, a chair, 2 sets of nest of tables, a big coffee table that is currently in the corner with the tv on it. A large suede storage box that doubles up as a seat. It sounds like a a lot of stuff and sounds cluttered but it's not because it's so big. Oh there's also a basket of logs at the side of the fire and built in bookshelves in the alcove.