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Best furniture & arrangement for this floorplan?

#1
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9/23/09 at 5:14pm
  • Joined: August 1999
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Hey folks, so I'm in the process of getting a new place. I use the Yamaha 1000 sound projector for the speakers. 

The room is 12' x 17', and it has a lot of windows/openings. See the attached pic. 

I don't actually have the furniture shown in the picture, so you can start with the "bare room." The window on the west wall extends to the ceiling, and then actually about 12" of the ceiling is glass there. 

The picture is oriented with north at the top. 
Putting the TV over the fireplace isn't an option - it actually has a marble surface that arches pretty high. 
 
I figure putting the tv on the north wall isn't good, because then when folks enter from the east opening they would immediately see a large tv. 
 
I considered putting it in between the two windows on the south wall, but it's only 36" wide, so a large 55" tv would extend about 7" over each window. 
 
I would prefer to have the sofa facing the south windows, since that's a bit of a feature. 
 
I considered having a sofa and two chairs (e.g., sofa on north wall, two chairs on south wall) but then there's really no good place to put the tv. If I put it in the northeast corner, then the southwest chair (angled in, toward the northeast corner) might work, but with only one seat having a good view, it wouldn't be very social. Same if I put it in the southeast corner - no one really gets a good, direct view. 
 
The drawing shows an L-shaped sofa, which seems to provide the best seating, but risks splitting the room and imposes something that you have to get around when going between the two openings. 
 
Don't get me started on getting good sound given all this - I've accepted that it will just have to be sacrificed. 
 
Anyway, any suggestions appreciated!




Edited by Oren - 9/24/09 at 2:08pm
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#2
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9/24/09 at 6:30am
  • Joined: September 2009
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It appears like your options are pretty limited. Either where you have it in the photo or against the wall where the photo is hanging on the wall.  Only problem is you might get glare coming in from both windows if it was where the picture is so I'd say where you are showing it might be best.

BTW, what did you use to render the room out?
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#3
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9/24/09 at 2:05pm
  • Joined: August 1999
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I used Live Interior 3D Pro (a Mac product). Nothing beats Chief Architect for the right balance of features and ease of use (Windows only), but Live Interior is easier to handle, to whip up a quick drawing. 
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#4
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9/28/09 at 10:22am
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You didn't mention what kind of sound system you may have connected to your 55" TV.   If it is 5.1 or higher than speaker placement needs to be considered as well as placement of the TV.   If that is the case then moving the TV off the diagonal and on to the right side wall would be your best alternative.   You could also add a comfortable swivel chair in the 36" space between the windows to add an additional viewing position for the TV.  One problem with this arrangement is your fireplace feature is not part of your seating arrangement.

I just finished  redecorating my family room and purchasing new furniture.  One thing I did was to actually play with my existing furniture and use other items like lawn chairs to simulate the size of the new furniture and how it would work with the placement of my 52" TV and 5.1 HT.   This tended to work better for me than playing with Architect software or graph paper.

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#5
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9/29/09 at 5:07am
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Those west windows are going to let alot of light into your pace in the evening - you'll need drapes.   You may want to consider outdoor blinds too which would help with the heat they will transfer in.

I'm not sure what that feature is that you have in the east wall.

One thought would be to scrap that TV altogether.   You could put a drop-down screen over your fireplace and place the projector in the opposite wall.

If that is to be your regular TV viewing area then a projector isn't suitable.   That east wall then looks pretty tempting.

Martin Luther observed that the human race is like a drunkard who falls off his horse on the left and makes up for it by falling off the next time on the right.

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#6
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9/29/09 at 1:45pm
  • Joined: August 1999
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Since you're not concerned about sound quality, the arrangement in the picture looks fine.  If you really dislike the walk-around "problem," you could go with a sofa against the wall, with a single chair with its back to the glass wall.  That way you could "short cut" between them.

Alternately, you could just put the TV in front of the two windows.  That's what I did.

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt
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#7
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9/30/09 at 8:13am
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I think I would put the display on the north wall where the picture is, and the sofa on the south wall. This might leave some space for a sound system later on if you so choose.

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#8
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10/4/09 at 6:13pm
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Thanks for all the replies folks. I was in it again this weekend (I don't actually have it yet..) and the northwest opening is larger than I thought - almost half the north side. 

Regarding the sound, I'm using the Yamaha YSP-1000 sound projector, which makes placement easy but won't yield great 5.1 sound because of the lack of walls to bounce the sound off of. 

I totally agree about the need to finally figure it out by placing furniture stand-ins and seeing how it works, but I can't resist day-dreaming about it in the meantime. :) OK, I'm busted - this is part problem solving, and part dicking around with software. 

The builder certainly expected the tv to go on the north wall - that's where the cable outlet is, and also the partial wall in the southeast corner (to the right of the chair) is longer than the partial wall in the northeast corner (so, it's deeper, to have the sofa along the south wall). 


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#9
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10/6/09 at 12:56pm
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OK, so now I'm leaning towards this:



But naturally I'll figure it out once I get in there with some stand-in furniture. 
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#10
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10/7/09 at 5:41am
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That's certainly how I'd go; but it seemed like you were trying to avoid that placement so I didn't want to be contrary. You might want to consider a wall mount with a swivel bracket so that you could angle the TV when viewing with people on the sofa.

If the sound bar doesn't do it for you, you could go with a 3.1 set-up pretty easily.
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#11
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10/7/09 at 9:14pm
  • Joined: August 1999
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Yeah, I was trying to avoid having the windows behind the sofas, and the TV facing them (glare), and the TV being the first thing you see when you round the corner to enter the room on the East side...but oh, well. 

Here's the TV stand I was thinking of getting:


I would put the Yamaha YSP-1000 sound projector on the top shelf, below the TV. It swivels, too, so if there are folks on the sofa, I can turn it a bit. 



Edited by Oren - 10/7/09 at 9:47pm
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