Monday, December 21, 2009

Sitting room, and then some

Imagine that you've just entered this room, and the host is inviting you to sit down:



Which seat would you choose? I think I'd go for one of the blue patterned armchairs. So many choices! If there were three people on each couch, the room could comfortably seat 12.

This makes me curious. How many people could sit in your family room? I just counted -- I have 7 spots -- one couch, a leather chair, two armchairs, and a desk chair.
I think this room, while lovely, looks too full, and if I were more scientific, I'd calculate a chair per square footage ratio - kind of like per capita, but we'll call it per infra.
So what do you think? Do more seats make a room more welcoming, or does it come to a point where enough is enough?

7 comments:

Things That Inspire said...

I think it depends on the size of a room, but I prefer to not overdo it on the seating but have auxiliary seating available if you should have extra guests (pull in a kitchen chair or a dining room chair, have little ottomans under a console for extra seating). I think it comes from my dislike of having any room too crowded with furniture. Also, I believe in living your life for the 360 days a year, not the 5 when you might actually need that extra seating.

Thought provoking post, though! We are designing a house right now, and I actually asked for the family room/keeping room to be reduced in size as I wanted it to be more of a cozy family spot with seating for 5-6.

Anonymous said...

Way too much seating in here- it seems like not much room to walk around, too.

I was looking at which chair to sit in and noticed the little chair with the blue zig zag. WAAAY too short to actually sit in.

Blayne Macauley said...

I have to say, it is too much for me. It would be easier to look at, but my eye going straight through to the crazy orange pattern on the dining room, so I have to force it to come back any look around the room, which doesn't really seem to have a center of focus. I am not a huge fan of too many chairs in general, but this seems like overkill to me. I do like the consistency of color throughout the room. If I were there by myself, I could curl up on the curved sofa on the right hand side so I could read a book and look out the window :)

Julie said...

Five or six seats in a living room sounds just right to me.
Now I look at this picture and I see one mini chair (is it just a bad angle, or is it really only ten inches off the ground?!?) and a crazy, distracting orange "masterpiece" hanging in the dining room. Things I do still like? The blue pattern on the chairs and, like Blayne pointed out, the color consistency.

C. A. Farrell said...

I believe I recently heard a wise old man say that "the average person leaves behind 12 chairs when they die." I wonder how accurate that really is?

Julie said...

Haha, C.A., I forgot about that whacko!

Jennifer said...

Our narrow living room has a sofa (brown, I might add!) facing two armchairs, which is sufficient for us and our guests most of the time. While the Christmas tree was up, I had to relocate a small ocassional chair into the room, and I really, really liked having it there. I have a lot of symmetry and pairs, so something a little off was nice.

On that note, this looks like a professional photograph, probably published. Stylists often bring other pieces of furniture into a room, so you can't always assume that it looks that way day-to-day. The child's chair (though lots of designers love them for a little humor) and the chair in the bottom right corner (and possibly even the pair of benches in front of the coffee table) looked "added" to me. Just a thought!

Enjoying looking through your blog!