Iantha Carley and her husband raised her two kids, now grown, in a small house. This meant that the living room was also the home theater, game room, library and meeting space.
“We all had to decide whether to watch the same show or go read a book,” Carley says. The Silver Spring, Maryland., interior designer finds that her clients have a similar situation. Often, there’s no basement to watch movies in, no room to relegate kids’ toys to.
The living room – once decorated with pretty accessories and reserved as a space for entertaining – is finding itself again as a place for living, with all the demands that come with it: wall space for a flat-screen TV, speakers for Friday-night movies, a surface for board games, storage for remote controls, seating for guests. It needs to be stylish enough to host dressy Thanksgiving hors d’oeuvres and still be comfy enough for Sunday afternoon naps.
As Washington designer Patrick Baglino Jr. explains, “When the room is organized and looks good and is arranged in a way that is conducive to conversation and living, it’s a total picture: style, form, function.” You might think that means the first order of business is to hide the TV, but both Carley and Baglino agree that it’s no longer passe to have the telly out in plain sight. “It is what it is,” Carley says. “We watch TV.”
What’s more important is to make the room ready to pivot to whichever activity is happening next, whether that’s book club in the morning or a video-game session after school. Think about how the room flows, whether people can walk through it without bumping into furniture. Use durable fabrics to stand up to spills. Get those cords organized and out of sight. And make sure there’s adequate, dimmable recessed and task lighting. Whether it’s called a living room, family room or multipurpose room, “it’s intended to be a place for a family to hang out,” Carley says. “Make it a place that everyone wants to enjoy.”
A few design tips
DVDs, DVRs, streaming-media consoles, game consoles, cords - they all come together to make an unsightly mess, Carley says. A media cabinet with slatted doors or one with a mixture of open and closed shelves, will conceal it all without inhibiting remote signals.
_ The days of hiding your television are over. “You have a TV. Lots of people have TVs. Why pretend like you don’t watch TV?” Carley asks.
Both Baglino and Carley recommend putting DVD collections behind closed doors or going with services such as Netflix, Hulu and iTunes. To streamline the collection you already have, try tossing the cases and putting the discs in binder sleeves.
Instead of filling a large room with a sectional, Carley suggests using a sofa and flanking it on one side with two “loungey” upholstered chairs, on the other with two accent chairs, and then filling out the arrangement with ottomans.
“An ottoman is a classic for a reason - because it works,” Baglino says. It can serve as extra seating for guests, as a table (with tray) for drinks and, yes, as somewhere to put your feet up.
The ideal family room “has lots of storage, and it can hold things like electronics, components and televisions, but in a beautiful, thoughtful way,” Baglino says.
