A living-dining room in which all the woodwork dining furniture, sideboard (if you must have one), occasional tables, chair armrests and so on are all of the same colour, and of as few different heights as possible, looks much bigger than one whose colours and heights are a jumble. Arranging a room to make the most of available space is a question of careful planning and compromise. One of the problems often encountered-unless you are lucky enough to be refurnishing completely, is trying to incorporate the often unsuitable furniture you already own. Inevitably, one has items inherited from a parent or grandparent, or that were bought on impulse, or to fit a different house.
But even if you cannot-indeed would not want to-throw everything out and start again, some improvements are always possible. Even a box unit that takes away two cubic feet of clutter will help. And in the long run, the daily comfort and convenience of having a well organised room, and the family friction avoided by flexible, practical furniture, will be worth any pangs of regret that you feel at parting with the ancient, much loved, but totally impractical object that once filled your room.
In a small space, you simply cannot have a huge sofa across a corner with yards of wasted space behind it, nor afford to ignore an alcove which could take shelving and cupboards and work-top but in fact still houses a cumbersome old desk or sideboard. And if there is something you simply cannot bear to part with, you will have to earn a place for it by perfect planning in the rest of the room. However intelligently you plan your space to suit your family’s various activities, there will still be limitations and problems. But in many ways these provide half the fun as well as the headaches. For they give you the incentive to be imaginative, and,ultimately, the satisfaction of knowing you have solved some problems and disguised others. And in terms of sheer comfort, space-saving can be a very rewarding activity.
Modern families tend to have sophisticated hobbies which involve a mass of equipment and materials. If these were allowed to ‘stray’ all over the house they would cause untold havoc. Small children have their nurseries to clutter up, and specialists have their workshops, but a properly planned ‘family room’ provides the whole family with a social centre where each member can create his own brand of mayhem. And then, perhaps, you will meet more often than just at mealtimes.
It’s no use packing the whole family into the spare room and hoping that everyone will have a marvellous time. Family rooms do have to be planned, if only to ensure that they are warm enough, well ventilated, suitably lit, insulated against noise, provided with adequate storage and somewhere to sit, and so on. The ‘basics’ should be carefully thought out before you try to plan the layout of the room.