Let’s take it a step or 2 back. I want to take you over room by room (just the ones that required extra work, creativity) and show you the pain points I needed to resolve or incorporate in the design. Not every room will have a natural center or focal point, some times you will need to create on. Sometimes you’ll need to rearrange the room and create a new focal point.
The “Big Living Room”- I’ll let you look at the room first and then I’ll say my piece….
The room is very big, lots of light coming in and the view is perfect. If you look at the floor plan there are lots of exit/ passage area:
1. On the right there is a big entrance/ exit to the foyer
2. To the left there are 4 big windows with double doors taking you to the backyard.
3. On the top left you can see another exit/entrance that takes you to the Den and guest bathroom.
4. One more passage area, a big one, is the kitchen. The kitchen and the living room has no wall separating between them.
As you know, or not, where there is a passage/ door you must leave 3 feet clearance. There is a big area all over the room you need to leave clear due to exits. Another thing is the shape of the room, it’s not an ordinary shape and doesn’t align with the kitchen direction. The natural focal point of the room, the fireplace doesn’t align with the kitchen as well. So we have a living room that at first look has so much potential but when you start drawing and measuring you start seeing many constraints. One of the many reasons why you must always draw the floor plan and measure everything.
I needed to draw the floor plan before I’m thinking on design/ furniture. I needed to make a decision, what will be my focal point. According to that in what direction and according to what will I align the design. Should I have the furniture align to the kitchen border line or should I align it to the fireplace?
The fireplace was too high to put the for a TV there, so I decided to have it on the right of the fireplace. That helped me decide the direction and alignment my design will. follow.
When you meet with the client its important to ask as many Qs as possible. Not just about the client’s needs but also get information on who else lives in the house. How will they be using the space and are there any conditions you should be aware of. In my case, 2 elderly parent will be living there and one is using a walker. I had to make sure my design, for all the common areas will be easy to navigate in.
As you can see I decided to create a new focal point, the fire place still took place as one but it wasn’t the only one. To create a new focal point you need to make it stand out. I decided to remove completely the built-in media cabinet. That created a niche which I then smoothed and covered with wallpaper (you’ll see the results soon).
Let’s go now to the “Small Living Room” & Foyer- Take a look…
This room is right at the entrance. It had Pentagon shape with 2 columns coming out to the foyer, about half way of the entrance door width. If you look at the left bottom picture you can see it blocks the flow. The room had dark maroon wallpaper on, the vibe was outdated.
This room’s purpose was more for social/entertaining and just a nice calm area for the lady of the house. A place she can read, watch TV, have a friend over to chat etc.
On one hand leaving the shape as is would allow for more space but the blockage it created was an eye sour. Now if we look at the Foyer, there was one more thing I needed to remove. The bar, there was no reason to keep it. It took too much space and was not needed as part of the household needs.
Removing the Bar and built in cabinets created another niche that I needed to find a good design for. Hint, I used wallpaper as part of it. I must say, wallpaper now days make a wonderful solution when you want to add some color, creativity or add mood to the room.
“Love like there’s no tomorrow. Live with no regrets, life’s too short. Find your smile and hold onto it.” – Madison Daniel
Nova ~ Design
