Anyone Have a Flair for a Floor plan?! Living Room Layout Help!

[USaYwHatNow]

We're about to move into a 1970s 4 bed detached. It's got such amazing potential space wise, and hasn't been touched decor wise for a very long time. We're looking forward to putting our own personality into it.

The couple who live there currently don't have a TV, so I am struggling to see what we could do/where we could place furnishings to make use of the space but not make it feel too crowded, and still include a TV.

We're hoping that now we have much more space to be able to entertain more.

We're looking to have a wide-screen TV (your standard 50ish inch screen) a few sofas or chairs not necessarily corner sofa but open to suggestions.

I guess it feels tricky as we've got the hallway door, dining room doors and stairs opening out into the room to contend with 😂

Have added floor plan and photos for context.

Hi! What's the cupboards between the dining room and lounge? Am I right in thinking the front door opens straight into the room, so the left side is effectively a corridor to stairs?

@Seaside3 thank you for your reply! So the front door opens into a small hallway, with the downstairs WC on the left. There is then a small internal door into the living room.

The cupboards between the living room and diner hold the boiler at the moment

PS we have a side entrance that leads into our utility room, then kitchen, then diner which we will probably use as the main entrance into the house

It might be helpful to share the whole of that floor plan. So the stairs lead up from the lounge, no corridor?

Just trying to work out which bits you can use and where access is required.

I think I’d use that wall between the window and dining doors, furthest from the stairs, for a bank of storage – Ikea Halva (possibly made that name up) or something, faux built in unless you have built-in joinery budget. TV, books, records, objet. Sofa – corner or two angled like a corner sofa – directed towards the cabinetry, and a rug to zone it.

Then the porch door, stairs, etc side of the room is more of a thoroughfare (see my helpful foot traffic arrows for the various flows) without impacting the sitting room side, and can also have coats and shoes in a cupboard on the wall at the foot of the stairs.

But it’s a bloody tricky room and I’d be tempted to make a paper plan and cut out to-scale shapes for things and move them around to see what works. Duct tape on the floor also works to check you have enough clearance!

Nice place! (carpet aside 😄) Have you considered going diagonal? Hard to tell whether it would work without getting in there with a tape measure, but it's a possibility.
Like this - excuse my terrible drawing skills . The circles are side tables and the thing in the corner is a tall potted plant.

It’s a tricky room with the through traffic to the stairs. A small thing you can do (if they aren’t already) is to change the hinges on the doors from the dining room to living room to 180 degree hinges so the doors can go flat against the walls. They will probably be open most of the time and it will give you more circulation space. In the longer term - sliding pocket doors might work best.

Thank you everyone who has commented so far! This is exactly what I wanted, out the box thinking which I certainly lack!

Here is the full layout

Awkward with it being a throughway.
I would treat as a smaller room with an imaginary corridor round the edge. TV in red, sofas in blue.

We also thought about changing the dining room doors to open into the dining room, rather than into the living room, as wondered whether that would mean we could push sofas/chairs a bit closer to those doors. Will obviously need to check clearance arc into the dining room 🤔

Is that a fire beside the chair with the pink cushions

@InsertUsernameHere great idea! The dining into kitchen door is currently on sliders.... Super retro but we actually love it 😂

I think @spitefulandbadgrammar ’s layout works better than @Squiblet ’s — I grew up in a tiny cottage where all the rooms led out of one another, and the only way to get from the front door and bedrooms to the kitchen and bathroom was by walking through the living room between the tv and whoever was watching it. Deeply unrestful and makeshift-feeling.

The other things to consider - which you might not be able to tell is what it like to sit in the living room. The house we are currently in - the living room felt really overlooked and not particularly comfortable to sit in watching TV - so we moved the TV to a back room (equivalent to you office/bedroom 5. Similarly - is it very sunny - are you going to be forever closing the curtains to keep the sun out of your eyes? Depending on where the TV is. I think it’s a lot of fun to play about with layouts - but I try not to spend money on new furniture etc. Until I’m in a place as it’s only then I get a real feel for what works. Other tip is to walk along the street and see how other people in similar houses have managed it!

It's a tricky shape but a great size. I'd have a long media wall because I'm obsessed with storage. The TV could be wall mounted in a space between shelves and cupboard in the unit.. You could have it on a swinging arm to make it easier to pull out and angle if there are more people and the angle isn't quite right.

An L or U-shaped sofa would maximise seating or lounging space (I miss lounging on the L-shaped sofa from our old house 😭).

A cupboard by the door is where I'd put coats and shoes. Unless you have space in the utility and will definitely be using that door.

Ooh, the bigger floor plan is helpful – do you need the bedroom at the back or can it be a snug/TV room, leaving more options for the front sitting room to be for entertaining as you won’t have to point furniture at a TV, you could have a pair of sofas facing each other, more conducive to chatting.

How about a media wall for TV creating a corridor to stairs, half height to see across the room. Sofa on right hand wall

OK, lovely house, but slightly difficult layout. I lived in a very similar one for 10 years. We had the sofas as I've drawn. Yes, those pink rectangles are sofas. Built in storage top right of lounge. I'd also look to see if you can do something with that boiler cupboard, seems a weird use of space. On our equivalent wall, we built an invisible cupboard, accessed from the lounge, but not sure how feasible with a boiler.

Lastly, we swapped the dining and kitchen over , mainly due to wanting a slightly larger kitchen, our original one was small. Looks like yours is OK.

I've attached a couple of photos of our old lounge, should help with what k mean!

I think @ButterMyParsnip has a good plan. You definately want to avoid having a walk way in front of the TV. Having the TV a bit further from the window, rather than tucked into the corner might help with glare/ brightness.
You could consider changing the dining room doors for sliding/pocket doors, or even removing them completely.
Sadly there is always going to be a 'corridor' aspect because of the need to access the stairs/loo, even if you don't use the front door for access. Having the sofa as Parsnips suggests does direct this flow away from the TV.

Do you have any budget for work?
id be tempted to switch the loo and hall round (or put a shower room in the garage off a wider hall - lose the loo), then build in a wall from the new hall door to the stairs
ill try and draw it…

Like this very bad drawing

Could you steal a bi5 if the back of the garage, then do an upwards extension to take the stairs out of the room?

@123zyx I might be wrong, but it looks like the garage is single story, not double.

I'd almost be tempted to screen off the stair area, maybe a room divider or nice folding screen, or two, with an opening in middle, otherwise it might never feel cosy or a dedicated space for relaxing. It really seems strange to put stairs in open it what was originally a three bed, but I'm saying this from my weird house with no sink or oven connection point in kitchen..

I'm not a fan of those 'diagonally placed' furniture ideas as I think furniture positioned that way inevitably takes up too much room and looks weird.

I prefer @ButterMyParsnip and @Twoshoesnewshoes ideas.

We've owned a few houses with odd layouts - one where the front door opened straight into a reception room, although fortunately it wasn't the main living room - that had the stairs in but was tucked away from the entrance. In that house we made the room with the front door into a kind of 'dining hall' that contained a huge bank of storage for coats and overflow kitchen stuff as the new kitchen was in an extension we built directly behind it.

The other example is our current (much smaller) house, where there's a tiny entrance 'hall' similar to yours @USaYwHatNow- although ours contains the staircase - leading to what was the main living room.

Because ours is a 400 year old 'cottage' (actually a former agricultural building) it has that typical 'room off another room' layout and we just hated the idea of the main living room being a thoroughfare to the rest of the ground floor. You had to walk through the small hall, living room and dining room before eventually reaching the kitchen which then had a breakfast room extension off it, meaning a long trek with shopping etc. There were two side entrances but due to ground levels these were accessed by a series of perilous steps so not ideal in wet/icy weather.

We opted to move the kitchen into the (now opened up) former living and dining rooms so there's no walking in front of someone watching TV for example. The new living/dining room feels far more private plus it has a lovely garden view. In addition we created a useful lobby between the rear of the new kitchen and the new living space adjacent to one of those side entrances. Coats/shoes are stored here plus there's a large walk-in cupboard perfect for a cloakroom (we intended to do this but are now selling).

Because of the kitchen layout/size it's unlikely anyone would walk past someone cooking etc.

Not saying this is what the OP should do, but just giving an example of how we dealt with a similar issue.