If you have the luxury of having a While you’d never call my living room (right) and my entertainment room (that’s it on the opposite page) “matching,” they harmonize. Both rooms have a lot of low to the ground furniture and share variations on the same colors. The Living room that doesn’t also double as a den/entertainment room, it’s nice to create an environment that is conducive to sitting around and chatting.
To that end, I arranged the furniture in this room to form sort of a conversation pit formed by a sofa and three chairs, nestled around a coffee table. The interior furniture is also arranged so that everyone can enjoy the fireplace; no chair has its back to the fire.
It’s a traditional arrangement that’s traditional for a reason: It works. The wood furniture pops against the backdrop of warm, neutral bamboo walls and floors. (Another advantage of floors made from light woods like bamboo, birch, or maple is that they hide dirt better than darker floors.) I also took care to inject my personality into this’ room without making any big, bold statements. The interior walls are hung with primarily small paintings, prints, and objects that were either thrift shop buys or created by myself or friends. The lamps are simple, made from found objects, and there are lots of guitars (and the errant surfboard) lying around.
It’s all about conversation and/or quiet time. In many ways, the den/entertainment room shares the design sensibility of the living room, but it’s turned way, way up the bright orange coffee table alone screams that there’s more of a party going on in here. This is the room where I can crank up the tunes or get rowdy with my buddies while watching a football game. But rather than creating a circular seating arrangement as I did in the living room, I gave this room an L-shaped arrangement so that the seating opens up to the entertainment center on the opposite wall. (I even designed the couch so that it’s long enough for two people to lie across and watch TV at the same time.