You’ve purchased your dream home, but as moving day approaches, you run into a stumbling block: it’s got an awkward living room layout. As one of the most frequented rooms in the house, your living room should feel warm and welcoming, no matter how tricky its design.
Lounge layouts can be awkward for any number of reasons. For example, you might reside in a period property, a Victorian home with a floor plan not exactly compatible with modern lifestyles. Or maybe a particular architectural feature is wreaking havoc with your plans: low ceilings, alcoves, archways, jutting columns and corners, the list of potential bugbears is infinite! But so are the solutions.
In this guide, I’ll be sharing plenty – and I won’t just be telling you to downsize your furniture or get rid of your favourite accessories and mementoes (although a little decluttering wouldn’t go amiss). It might sound counterintuitive, but many of my awkward living room layout ideas involve leaning into their unconventional, and by the end of this guide, loveable quirks.
Contents:
Guiding Considerations
As with any home refresh, cookie-cutter solutions simply don’t exist, and if you peg all of your hopes on them, you might inadvertently multiply your problems. The main one being a decently functional space, but all the same, a soulless living room. Yes, it is possible to over-plan your interior and strip out its organic warmth – the “millennial grey” trend of the early aughts is living proof.
To make sure you design around your own space and not some mythic ‘average living room’, keep the answers to these questions in your back pocket throughout the process:
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Who regularly spends time in the living room? Every design decision should reflect the users’ needs and priorities, how they’d ideally use and inhabit the space
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How sociable do you envision your living room being? The level of sociality ought to have a bearing on your seating. The traditional sofa-armchair ratio and placement work in more formal setups, whereas scattered seating vignettes spark organic conversation and make for a more flexible layout.
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How do you want to use it? Your room’s purpose sets the layout. It’s why ‘broken plan’ layouts crop up in multi-purpose living rooms and why the film buff’s home will feature the entertainment hub as the main focal point over, say, a fireplace.
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Are there any natural focal points you want to conserve? Be it a chimney breast or a stone feature wall, focal points are like the punctuation of interior design, offering a spot for the eye to rest and a natural direction for sightlines to travel. You’ll need at least one to anchor the space.
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What constraints do you need to work around? Sometimes an extension or architectural overhaul isn’t feasible. In these cases, working around your limitations by embracing their quirks is the wisest course of action.
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Is the room navigable? Are walkways intuitive, and do they have enough clearance from furniture? The bottom line is that your living room should be user-friendly and frictionless to move about in. No trip hazards, please!
- How much storage do you need in the room? Is there anything you could relocate?
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And, most importantly, do you have the dimensions to hand? You’ll need them when sourcing furniture, so each piece fits perfectly.
Redesigning an awkward living room layout feels like an elephant-sized task when you’re yet to take the first step. That’s why I always tell my customers to harness the most limitless tool at their disposal: the internet.
Besides guides like these, there are tons of helpful resources out there, from mood boards on Pinterest to video tutorials on YouTube.
In my experience, you can’t beat visualising your design conundrum within the context of your living room’s unique dimensions. In the past, I’ve always sketched out room plans on paper, but recently I’m far more inclined to use a free digital tool like Planner5d or Rayon Design
Awkward Living Room Layout Ideas
I bet you’re dying to leap straight into the solutions now. So, here they are: oodles of awkward living room layout ideas for every kind of blueprint you can imagine.
Tiny Living Rooms
Pint-sized living rooms are a particularly common occurrence in Victorian terraced housing, where smaller, more compartmentalised spaces are the norm, but they also crop up in new build flats. Dealing with these more restrictive interiors is chiefly a lesson in optical illusions and clever spatial planning.
Problem
The annoying thing about these awkwardly tiny living rooms is that they lack adequate storage space, and force designers to make unwanted furniture concessions to fit the essentials into the interior. There’s also the self-evident fact that they’re not nice to be in, claustrophobic and dingy by nature.
Solutions
- Try not to let furniture hug the walls; instead, gently pull pieces inwards and float storage against the back of your sofa.
- Pick low-profile, light-touch furniture to keep visual weight at a minimum; items with tapered legs, thin frames, glass elements, and reflective surfaces each serve to make the space look bigger than it actually is.
- Reclaim precious inches with bespoke shelving or cabinets, and foster a natural, curated feel.
- Strategically position focal points to draw the eye towards the distance.
- Incorporate items with round, flowing silhouettes to soften harsh angles and optimise traffic flow around corners – plus, it brings a distinctive contemporary aesthetic!
Long, Narrow Living Rooms
Another problem layout my customers regularly complain about is those long, narrow spaces, which, despite their generous footprint, make the design a real faff. They’re common in my neck of the woods, North Yorkshire, where urban terraces feature an awkward ‘middle room’ with shotgun proportions.
Problem
Because these awkward living room layouts are so truncated, it’s easy for your furniture to feel ‘squished in’ when you have items facing each other from opposing walls; interior designers often call it the ‘train carriage effect’. Besides this, circulation and traffic flow tend to be common snags, as homeowners struggle to avoid the unbalanced, corridor-like feel. Here are some ideas for countering these issues.
Solutions
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Zone the room by dividing the living room into smaller sections; they’re much easier to tackle this way.
- Again, float furniture slightly into the room, rather than pushing it up against the walls.
- Consider an L-shaped furniture arrangement to break up the flow.
- Anchor each zone with alternating furniture groupings, creating a natural thoroughfare to guide footfall across the room in an “S” shape.
- Avoid placing seating on opposite walls – unless you’re a fan of the waiting room feel.
Square Living Spaces
Square living rooms are deviously tricky spaces to plan around. You’d think their symmetry would simplify the process, but that symmetry in and of itself can become something of a double-edged sword.
Problem
Because square living rooms are so balanced, it can be tricky to instil an organic, lived-in feel. However, for me, it’s navigating entry points and traffic where the real difficulty kicks in. Luckily, these ideas are a great balm.
Problem
- In a small square-shaped living room, opt for a centralised social layout: place a rug at the heart of the interior, with a coffee table or ottoman on top and a couple of armchairs and sofas angling inwards.
- Nest a corner sofa in one of the right angles away from the door, although not too close to the wall.
- Pick one wall to serve as the focal point, placing a mirror, art piece, wall scones, or a shelving unit there, or let the fireplace do all the talking.
L-Shaped Interiors
As I said in my dedicated guide to L-shaped living spaces, arranging them can quickly feel akin to playing a game of Tetris. Nonetheless, you can easily overcome the hurdles with a bit of patient problem-solving.
Problem
Essentially, it all boils down to the main corner of the ‘L’. In more traditional setups, you’d have a physical divider (walls, doors, or another architectural feature) between the two rectangles that make up the interior. Here, though, you need to be creative to ensure that the transition between each leg looks intentional and cohesive.
Solutions
- Lean into the L-shaped setup with an L-shaped modular sofa.
- Zone the room into smaller shapes (a vertical rectangle and a small square area or three oblongs). Treat each as its own ‘mini room’, with a focal point to anchor the décor.
- Be pragmatic with your TV placement; it doesn’t need to be dead in the centre, as long as you have other focal points to draw away attention.
- Soften angles with curved edges. Here, a rounded sofa, coffee table, pouffe or floor lamp all look the part.
- If doors and radiators get in the way, try a diagonal layout; place your sofa at angle across the inner corner of the "L" and balance the look with a console floated behind it.
Wide Sitting Rooms
The inverse of the long, narrow spaces I mentioned earlier, wide sitting rooms, share similar issues. As such, many of the same tips apply.
Problem
Appealing rooms are often designed around proportionality, so having the right-sized space for people, rather than a pure abundance of it. This is exactly why wide living rooms are so tricky – how do you fill the interior, without messing up the scale?
Solutions
- Opt for low-slung pieces that ooze comfort or broad items that sit naturally within a wider space.
- If things are still looking cavernous, reduce the width by installing a display cabinet or shelving unit.
- Social seating arrangements also work really well to break up the space
- Float a sideboard, dining table or cabinet behind your sofa to introduce a sense of enclosure and security.
Funny, Non-Standard Shapes
Some quirky living room layouts are so unique that there’s no blueprint to resolving them. Instead, you have to wholeheartedly embrace their weirdness, and bank on the character they infuse into the space.
Problem
Non-standard blueprints call for unconventional solutions. Usually, you’ll find them choc-full of architectural oddities, which might get in the way of the main elements. Then there are wonky walls to account for. All in all, a nightmare.
Solutions
- Identify your largest wall and designate that for your largest furniture pieces, providing statement elements the space they deserve.
- When uneven walls are pushing everything askew, consider masking the disproportion with sculptural pieces boasting unexpected silhouettes.
- If you’ve got low ceilings or attic beams, think vertically and use long, dramatic curtains to elongate a space. Likewise, short pendants draw the eye upwards, but don’t pose an overhead hazard.
- Reclaim underused spaces with custom joinery or in-built storage. This way, your storage works with the space, not against it.
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Open plan living is ideal for young families, so consider how you could implement these principles functionally in your own lounge, without sacrificing flow.
Dealing With Corners
Your living room will have at least four. If it’s a converted barn, church, or pre-21st-century build, like the higgledy piggledy terraces you see in Yorkshire’s many historic towns, there’ll likely be many more.
Problem
It’s difficult to know what exactly to put in them, and they can get in the way of big furniture placement, especially if your options are limited by other impediments like doors or awkward dimensions.
Solutions
In the majority of cases, you’re doing corners a disservice by discounting them as “dead space” when a folding bookcase, round sideboard, houseplant or stack of nesting tables could fit just so.
For many homeowners, the solution is simple: a snug reading corner, with just enough room for a single armchair, beanbag or built-in seat. You don’t even need a side table when the alternative is a stylish wall sconce and a floating shelf for your current reads.
Tackling Obstacles (Windows, Doors & Radiators)
To round off these awkward living room layout ideas, let’s talk obstacles. The finicky little elements that cause way more drama than their small stature might have you expect.
Problem
They pose an issue for placing large pieces of furniture and eat into otherwise perfectly good floor space.
Solutions
Windows and radiators don’t immediately render their surrounding area useless. With the former, pop a low-standing console table in front of the glass or install a window seat over the sill; you get to retain the views and create seating/storage. The latter? Adorn the radiator with an attractive cover with a built-in shelf or hidden compartment.
Doors can be a little trickier, but not impossible, to deal with. If practical and safe to do so, you could flip it on its hinges, so it opens outwards rather than cutting into the living room. Folding doors are also a good shout here. Otherwise, removing them from the equation by knocking through to the adjacent room is a surprisingly impactful last resort, since it also floods natural light into the interior.
Conclusion: It’s Not the Furniture, It’s How You Use It
A poorly designed living room layout is a mood killer and a real hindrance to using the space stress-free every day, let alone when you have guests over. But just because you weren’t blessed with four symmetrical walls doesn’t mean you can’t make it work.
In my experience, it’s often an outdated mindset that holds homeowners back. So, take a deep breath, get your tape measure to the ready, and apply the principles of movement, flow, negative space and scale. With just a bit of editing or a furniture reshuffle, you’ll be surprised at how much more inviting your once awkward living room will become – no need to consult the catalogue.
That said, if your furniture is looking tired and it’s crying out for a refresh, check out our guides on upcycling old oak pieces. Short on time? Then here’s your cheat code: our range of premium living room furniture.
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