Designing your new sitting room

House is changing

Sometimes you feel like making some small or big change in your house, just to make it more welcoming or more functional for your needs.

Habits change, and so do tastes, too. Even the number of persons living in the house can vary, or even the age has changed, and therefore the needs, of some of them.

So it becomes a real need making new choices about your furniture: you could think only about a different arrangement of the existing pieces, or maybe about buying some new articles.

Here are some suggestions for setting up for the best a relaxation area or a small sitting room, such as what type of sofa, the position of the coffee table, or the most appropriate type of lighting.

Relaxation area in open space

The open space solution is perhaps the most common situation, at present, in homes of recent construction, and is sometimes a necessity, other a lifestyle choice.

It is an unavoidable choice, in fact, in the case of apartments, or houses, usually too small to think of kitchen and living room set in two different rooms.

It is a real lifestyle choice when, even with considerable space available, you prefer this kind of solution, which is very modern indeed, and typical of those who always love to live, or, better, share their house with other people, regardless of time and space.

And so therefore it becomes important in these structures to define places and functions in a precise way, because there are no walls or other kind of dividers.

Obtaining a relaxation area requires a few moves, the most important thing is not so much to establish position and physical size, but you should rather create the right atmosphere.

First of all, place sofa or sofas so as to subdivide the spaces. It is obvious that it is very important the choice of the type of articles, depending on whether or not they will be leaned against a wall, or if, vice versa, they will be themselves used as a partition.

In the latter case, for example, you must choose them with the well finished backrest, and not too high.

Pay attention, then, if you choose a fixed sofa with peninsula. If the room is small, a much better choice would be a pouf, to create a sort of movable chaise longue, rather than a fixed structure that has a well-defined direction, left or right, unless you are sure that the distribution of spaces is the definitive choice, or at least that it woul be for a long time.

The choice of the sofa with peninsula also influences the position of a possible coffee table, which, unless your sofa is a very long one, is difficult to place in front: much better would do a table placed at the side, a bit higher if on the side of the armrest, and lower if on the longest side of the peninsula.

If the room is large enough then the table, mostly of square shape, will be placed undoubtedly in front of the sofa.

How to define spaces with adequate lighting

One way to define a relaxation / reading space, already physically determinate in the living room, would be to underline its exclusivity with a kind of light to create the right ambiance. You could do this with a floor lamp, to be lighted only when needed, when the type of general lighting in the living area is really too much and too scattered.

This assessment makes it clear why it is always advisable, but mostly in open spaces, to arrange various points of light that you can manage depending on different situations.

Just think of the inconvenience of having to read your favorite book by the light of the bright spots in the ceiling that serves the entire room or the ceiling lamp over the table near sofa. Or, even worse, by the light of wall lamps scattered in the room only because beautiful and expensive, placed with the intention of giving light everywhere and with the only result to create a flat lighting that does not do any of the original purpose ...

Much better woul be placing various light spots of different types, at the same time, not necessarily with luminaires of the same collection.

If you like a model of a specific brand you can certainly take advantage of the different solutions from the same brand collection, but you can also diversify with different models, thus characterizing your relaxation place in a much more thought out way, depending on the function, thus playing with different materials, finishes and also, why not, different styles.

The same effect is obtained with a lamp placed on a table next to the sofa, facing the wall, if there is one, or at least to the side which is considered to be the limit of the relaxation area. This limit could also be fictitious and created at the very center of the room, or in a transition area, simply by placing, in fact, a table on one side of sofa or between two sofas.

You can also use both options at the same time, that is floor lamps and table lamps, to create two different relaxing areas when the living room is composed of several sofas. In this case, it may be advisable using lamps from the same brand collection.

Or, again, you could place a pair of lamps to be put on two tables on the two sides, if the living room is a large one, as well as a floor lamp in the shape of an arc could be the best way to solve the lighting of the relaxation area, especially when it is large and positioned in the center of the room.

In this latter case, it becomes important to study the right solution for placing the pieces of furniture so as to create a well-defined area, otherwise you may not feel comfortable in a too broad space.

Be careful, then, and pay attention to the lighting, to capture as much as possible the relaxing atmosphere in your favorite corner.