There’s one layout “quirk” common to most of the houses in the area that we’re moving to: the family rooms aren’t really ideal for televisions. Either TVs were a lot different in the 80s or the builders just didn’t care — the former is definitely true, the latter is certainly possible — but most of the houses we looked at made TV and furniture positioning a bit of a challenge.
Our future living room is no exception. If you walk into the family room from the foyer, the wall straight ahead is all windows overlooking the back yard. The wall to the right has the fireplace and a set of built-in cabinets in a recessed portion of the wall. The “front” wall is really just open to the foyer and stairs, and the wall to the left has some blank space plus a wide doorway into the kitchen. I’ve been playing around with Homestyler, so here’s a rough mockup:
I’ve only been able to come up with two realistic ideas, and they both have some pros and cons.
- Mount the TV above the fireplace. This seems to be the go-to solution these days and I know a lot of people who have done it. We would position our couch to face the TV/fireplace. All is well…except that I’m not really a fan of the TV-over-fireplace thing because of how high the TV ends up. Also, underneath the sheetrock, the chimney is brick the whole way up, which adds a degree of difficulty to mounting anything on it.
- Put the TV on our current media stand on the wall between the doorway to the kitchen and the stairs. We’d position the couch to face the TV. All is well…except now the back of the couch is in front of the fireplace. I feel like cutting off the fireplace — the focal point of the room — would look strange.
All the other options I’ve come up with seem worse. There’s no way I’m putting a TV in front of the windows. The staircase is open to the living room, and there’s not enough wall space there for a TV. And the built-ins include upper shelves as well so putting the TV there would block those shelves (plus I don’t want to shove the TV back in that recessed corner).
At this point I figure we’ll just have to move things around once we move in and just see what seems to work best. But in the meantime, am I overlooking any other possibilities?
p.s. Thank you to everyone who left moving tips on my last post! All your advice has been super helpful!
Also keep in mind that in the 80’s no one ever probably thought we’d have the option to MOUNT a TV to a wall.
Ha! Very true.
The TV doesn’t have to be the focal point of the family room or even part of the family room. Consider moving it to the room which will become your study or the play room. Maybe when in the future you decide to remodel, you can lower the fireplace mantel, which I think is becoming more common to make TV’s the focal point. Or you can do what we did (will look a little different in your place) which is put the TV off center in the built ins and still center the room on the fireplace.
I admit I do like to watch tv in the kitchen when I’m cooking, you could put a smaller TV somewhere visible from the kitchen for that purpose.
We will have a fairly large living room as well right off the foyer and have thrown out the idea of putting the TV in there and making the family room just a hangout/play space. We might end up trying that once we move in also.
Some of our old neighbors put it on a console table in front of the stairs. I think that worked well for evening, but I’m sure the glare from the Windows was crazy during the day. I’d think about the living room idea. What else are you going to use that for? 🙂
Well, the living room was kind of earmarked as our office/study. If we put the TV in there, it’d be a TV room/library and we’d have to put the computers upstairs in a guest room/office combo.
I’d say if you are going to have a TV in that room, you are going to have to put it over the fireplace or off to the side the way Becca has hers. Otherwise you are going to need different furniture. If you got a different couch you might be able to put it in fron to the stairs, but depending on which way the house faces, the Windows might make a lot of glare.
Depending on what the fireplace looks like, you might be able lower the mantle on the fireplace, or even remove it.
I should have mentioned it, but different furniture is an option. Our couch wasn’t super high quality and is pretty worn out after 7 years. Once Charlotte is past the spit up stage (so close!), we plan to get something new.
Over the mantle is my vote — I think you would get used to the height
You could install a projector on the ceiling and an automated rolling screen to come down in front of the fireplace for when you want to watch if your willing to make the switch.
If it was me I’d put the tv in another room. We did that when we moved to a house that had a den and a living room. The living room is so pretty without a tv. We ended up watching a lot less tv too. We have a house speaker system and listen to music and play with the kid out there most of the time. Maybe watch an hour of tv after the kid goes to bed. I just use my phone in the kitchen to watch or listen to something (or put something on the house speaker to listen to) if I’m going to do that while I’m busy in there. I would never go back to a prominent TV.