The perfect living room layout offers comfort without clutter. It invites guests to sit down, and it provides you with a peaceful place to relax. In this guide, we show you how to decorate a living room with a fireplace and TV.
First, you’ll need to make an important decision: Between the fireplace and television, which will be the focal point of your living room? If you mount your TV above the fireplace, designing your room will be easier because your focus will be all in one place.
As you determine how to layout your living room, we offer some design tips and tricks.
Do’s and Don’ts for Living Room Layouts with a Fireplace
DO arrange your furniture to allow for ease of movement to and from the fireplace.
DO intentionally position coffee tables and ottomans, not just because of their appearance. Allow your guests to maneuver around the room conveniently. Use coffee tables and ottomans to create pathways, not block them.
DO place an accent chair beside the fireplace, creating an inviting and warm fireplace seat for you or a guest.
DON’T put a rug too close to the fireplace. While we love the look of a large rug to anchor a room, we’d hate for flying embers to cause a burn in your rug. Be careful about rug length.
DON’T allow your sofa to block the view of a fireplace. Angles are your friend!
Living Room Fireplace Arrangements by Shape
From here, how you position your living room furniture around a fireplace and TV will depend upon the shape of your room. Here’s some layout help for living rooms of all shapes
Long Living Rooms With a Fireplace
A long living room can feel like a hallway without the right furniture arrangement. To avoid that look, begin with smaller pieces—bookcases, open shelving, chaises, accent tables, or ottomans—and place them carefully around the room. They’ll help provide a sense of space and comfort to the room without overwhelming it.
Open Living Rooms With a Fireplace
The vast spaces of an open floor plan can be a blessing and a curse when it’s time to arrange furniture. So much room to fill! To begin, define a living room space around your fireplace, perhaps anchored by a rug and bordered by the lines of your furniture. Be sure to take advantage of the space of an open living room: feel free to pull furniture away from the walls and into the center of the room or create a conversation nook of chaises positioned around a distinctive coffee table.
Square Living Rooms With a Fireplace
Play with angles and shapes to create an illusion of space in a square room. That chair that you have against the wall? Pull it away a little and set it off at an angle. When choosing a coffee table, consider an oval shape.
How do you embrace the layout and create a balanced, inviting space if you’re trying to arrange furniture in your living room with a corner fireplace? Take on the challenge with our design tips below! Make sure every guest and member of your home feels cozy and relaxed with your corner fireplace and surrounding furniture.
How to Arrange a Small Living Room With a Fireplace
Arranging a small living room is challenging, and that task can become even more daunting when the small living room includes a fireplace. You want to make your beautiful, warmth-giving fireplace the center of attention, but how do you go about it when you have such limited space?
The trick is to visualize the space before sliding furniture across the floor. Here are three ideas for arranging small living rooms with fireplaces to get you started:
1. Center Fireplace with Plenty of Seating
You might think that small living rooms look best with less furniture, but that isn’t always the case. When designing around a fireplace, you can create a cozy vibe by using a loveseat and two accent chairs instead of a sofa. And instead of using end tables around the sofa, you can use an accent table between the chairs to hold items like lamps, coasters, or books.
To maximize your storage space in your small living room, add bookcases to either side of the fireplace for a faux built-in shelving look.
2. Center Fireplace with Two Stylish Sofas
If your fireplace is in the center of your small living room, you can maximize space by using two small loveseats for seating instead of a single large sofa. You’ll get the same amount of seating, but your look will be less crowded. If you have enough space, you can place end tables beside the love seats for extra storage and table space. A rug large enough to fit all the furniture ties the room together and adds to the cozy vibe.
3. Corner Fireplace with Extra Chairs
Corner fireplaces can be a little awkward to arrange furniture around when you don’t have enough space to turn your furniture to match the fireplace. The trick to keeping the fireplace as the focal point of your room is to angle the furniture so it points toward the fireplace.
Tips for Arranging Furniture with a Corner Fireplace
Making your corner fireplace the center of attention in your living room may require an unconventional furniture arrangement. At least one piece of furniture should face the fireplace, but always keep the fireplace in mind when arranging the entire room.
In many cases, this means abandoning the traditional arrangements that align furniture around the room’s walls in favor of floating sofas, love seats, and chairs for a more open flow into the room and toward the centerpiece.
Below are some tips for arranging furniture with a corner fireplace:
- Use painter’s tape to outline your arrangement. Before you move your furniture or bring new furniture into your living room, measure each piece carefully for length and width. Place the same length of tape on the floor where you intend to place the furniture. This step will help you to visualize your furniture arrangement.
- Be sure to consider where your eye focuses as you enter and sit in the room. Choose a focal point for the room, and orient your furniture around it. A set focal point will ensure an organized and balanced look. If you have a corner fireplace, it should be your center of attention.
- Pay attention to comfortable traffic flow, leaving enough room for people to walk between pieces. If you change your mind, relocating the painter’s tape is much easier than moving the furniture.
Play with Living Room Layouts with our Interactive Room Planner
Don’t just hope for the best when choosing furniture. Before you shop, design your room with our interactive room planner. You can mock up a room in the shape you need and place furniture and accessories in it to see what fits and how everything works together. When you begin to shop, you’ll be confident in choosing the best pieces for your room.