This Simple Layout Trick Makes Your Living Room Infinitely More Inviting

2 min read

Whether you’re planning a dinner party or a casual movie night, there are dozens of factors you have to consider when you’re hosting—including where your guests should sit.

No one is saying you should rearrange your home or install a ’70s-style sunken living room just to facilitate conversation. Designer Alexander D. Wilson has a seating trick that elevates any layout. Instead of organizing your seating options on a room-by-room basis, focus on crafting various “seating zones” within a single space.

“Crafting multiple seating groups creates a gracious layout that can function in more than one way,” Wilson says. “Sometimes it is a solution to the conditions that an existing space presents.”

In the recent redesign of a home on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Wilson put this idea into action in not just one, but multiple rooms of the home.

In the living room of this NYC home, Wilson used upholstered armchairs to create a distinct seating group, differentiating them from the seating arranged closer to the wall through complementary color palettes and contrasting silhouettes.

In this case, he was working with a generously sized living room and a family room, which called for a thoughtfully laid-out furniture plan. “Meaning, utilize as much of the space as possible by crafting distinct areas that serve more than one purpose,” he adds.
But don’t just start filling your home with tables, couches, and armchairs. Seating zones help to create intentional spaces that add interest to your home’s color and pattern scheme while giving you and your guests the choice to enjoy the space (and each other’s company) how you see fit.

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“It’s important to consider how the space will be used,” Wilson continues. “The living room, for example, is intended to be a space for entertaining, so we created multiple seating groups centered around a core group that serves as the focal point.”

While there’s no strict formula for creating a seating zone of your own, Wilson’s advice is to always consider how your room flows. Design around the paths you travel daily through the floor plan, how your color palette influences the way light travels, and where your furniture fits in the space.

“You don’t want a room to be filled to the brim with furniture just for the sake of it, and conversely, you want to maximize all the possible functions and square footage the room has to offer,” Wilson says.

In the end, just like good conversation, it’s all about striking a balance.

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