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The Art of Arranging
Furniture Placement Makes for Style and Comfort By Shel Franco
A third type of arrangement would be a parallel seating arrangement. Here, you place furniture pieces facing each other and perhaps flanking (perpendicular to) a focal point like a fireplace.
When Carly Minnell of Provo, Utah, moved into her new home, she encountered a large fireplace, two sets of French doors, a large picture window and a grand staircase. This added up to no wall space for a primary seating arrangement. "I was really at a loss," she says. "Nothing looked right until I took my designer's advice and forgot about the walls. I set up the arrangement in the middle of the room and left a few feet of walking space around it."
Minnell admits that arranging furniture like this seems to limit the space being used. "I thought it was odd to have all the furniture crammed into the middle of the room," she says. "But it really looked good much better than what I had before."
Unlike Minnell, your primary seating arrangement may leave excess, empty space at the ends of the room. This is particularly true with long, narrow spaces. In this case, Groves suggests a secondary seating arrangement, such as:
