Living Room Remodel design

What the room has to do

Living rooms are remodelled for three reasons: the fireplace is dated, the floor is tired, or the lighting is a single fitting in the middle of the ceiling. Address those and the furniture arrangement usually sorts itself out, because it was the room fighting back, not the sofa.

Layout rules

• Keep seating within 8ft of each other or the room stops holding a conversation.
• Build joinery to 18in deep flanking a chimney breast — deeper and it projects past the breast awkwardly.
• Leave a 32in route through the room that does not pass between the seating and the fire.
• A hearth wants 16in of clear floor in front and 8in to each side.
• Sofa to coffee table: 16in.

Lighting plan

The single most common living room fault is one central pendant. Replace it with four or five low-output sources at different heights — a floor lamp by each seat, a picture light, something on a shelf — and put the lot on one dimmed circuit.

What usually goes wrong

• A television mounted above the fire, too high to watch comfortably.
• Joinery built deeper than the chimney breast so the wall reads as lumpy.
• Recessed downlights in a grid, which is office lighting.
• A rug too small, leaving every piece of furniture stranded on bare floor.

In a small one

Removing a chimney breast is the one structural move that reliably transforms a small living room, because it returns two alcoves' worth of wall and lets furniture sit flat. It is also the one people regret skipping.