Sectional Healing

Well hello there design friends - how ya doing today? You know, I was thinking a little bit about some of the episodes I’ve done in the past that dive into a very specific spaces in the home and what to keep in mind if you’re renovating or restyling those spaces. The episode titled Spa Vibes talks about the bathroom, Workin it from Home talks about a home office set up, and Fresh Out The Oven is all about kitchen set up.

This sort of, series - I guess you could call it, is a pretty popular one. I wanted to keep it going and jump into one of the rooms I get asked about the most as a designer - the living room. I touched on this space a little in the episode called Level Up, which was my second episode ever, but there’s so much more to talk about.

Living rooms really serve as the heart of any home. We do so much in these spaces - from socializing to napping, and everything in between. But, it wasn’t always like this. Back in the early 1800’s these rooms were referred to as parlors or front rooms, and were used fairly rarely for special occasions like hosting formal guests, and even holding wakes for family that had passed. So these rooms were literally death rooms, not living rooms. The parlor was more like the threshold from the public-receiving part of a home to the more private spaces like bedrooms and kitchens. This all has changed over the last few hundred years, as our society’s needs have shifted. Now, many homes have what is referred to as a family room or den that is much more focused on being a place to relax, usually centered around some kind of media console, TV, video game console, or maybe projector if you’re fancy like that. Plenty of homes still have both a more formal front area and a more casual family room, especially in the suburbs of the United States. I moved around a lot growing up and I think most of our houses had a living room upstairs and family room in the basement that was a pretty much a shrine dedicated  to my brother’s video games. But now that I live in New York City, I know the value of having even one decent sized living room that isn’t sectioned off to create another bedroom for a roommate.

Because we are living in the year 2021 and dealing with the pandemic - everyone is home so much more than we used to be. The multifunctional needs of this room have majorly up leveled. These spaces need to pivot from being a hang out space to an office, to a dining room, even a spare bedroom sometimes. So what makes a great living room space? What are the building blocks and the things to keep in mind?

Well to start, every room needs an anchor. Something that is large, and visually dominant to ground the whole space and most of the time in a living room, it’s the sofa. There are really so many configurations and types of sofas to work with. Here’s a vocab footnote: you will always hear me personally say sofa as opposed to couch. The connotation of the word couch for me is a little too dumpy, frankly. It makes me think of something you’d be getting ride of. “That old couch with the stains on it is going outside to the trash” Sofa tends to imply more structure, and more design thinking. That may also just be a product of my background in commercial interior design - a couch would never get used in a public space or an office because it wouldn’t meet the durability requirements for a commercial piece. The terms at the end of the day are really interchangeable, but I always say sofa. Okay, footnote over.

In the last 30 years, the use of a sectional sofa had been pretty much the gold standard when it comes to American living rooms. This piece gets its name from its modular capabilities - different sections that can be configured in tons of ways. Most sectional sofas have a large kits of parts, and the idea is someone choses the pieces that work for them, and put them together, typically in some kind of an “L” shaped configuration. One of the reasons sectionals are so popular is because of they exude luxury with their massive footprints. I think the first time I saw a giant sectional in someone’s home was maybe 1996 when I was living in Utah. I remember being a little scared of it. It was vastly out of scale with the room and made out of jet black leather. It was basically like a giant black panther was curled up in the middle of the room. But once I sat in it, the appeal was clear. Most of the seats reclined, and there was enough room for multiple people to lay down. There were drink holders in secret places and I sunk into that thing like quicksand. I’ve slept on sectionals and while it isn’t my first choice, it certainly works in a pinch. Plenty of these things have sofa bed components which adds a whole other layer of function them, just don’t ask me to help you get one up a four story walk up.

There’s something that feels really intimate ,yet safe about a sectional. If you and I sat on a sectional together, we can sit very far apart, and still technically be sitting on the same piece of furniture together. So - boundaries and intimacy at the same time! There is certainly inspiration drawn from the sunken living room of the 1970’s, which many people today still covet,

but it’s practically is a hindrance. I mean did someone say tripping hazard? 

But a sectional is not the only way to get a cozy relaxation headquarters. The often forgot about sweet loveseat and three seater standard sofa can be exceptionally cozy and look like a page out of Architectural Digest at the same time, if you keep a few things in mind.

So you know I’m obsessed with measurements and sofas and sectionals are no exception. If you’re shopping for a new sofa, besides looking at the obvious overall dimensions to make sure it works in your space, you want to look at the seat depth and height. The deeper and lower the seat, the more casual and frankly the more like a mattress it feels.  As a baseline, your average seat is 18” high and 18” deep - this isn’t even a comfy seat I’m talking about, this is just a typical chair. For the depth of a sofa, 20” is enough to feel comfortable, but for a truly plush sofa you really want to start at a 24” seat depth. For the height you have about a 2” tolerance range either way, but anything higher than 20” will feel exceptionally formal and anything lower than 16” starts to dip into a level that can feel like you’re sitting on the floor and can be difficult for some of us to stand up from.

Speaking of that, arm height is incredibly important as well. If you want your sofa to feel super casual and loungy, a low arm or armless option will suite you. But, if you have elderly, or differently abled family, or frankly even if you’re just prone to having a back bad, a higher arm height, somewhere around 24” will act as a launch pad for you to push off from when standing up. No matter what type of style of sofa you go with, a huge detail that will completely change the look of the entire room is your base or leg choice. Selecting a high leg on a sofa will keep it visually up away from the floor and make the room feel larger and more open. If you go with an upholstered base that extends close to the floor,  this will add a beefiness to the feel of the sofa and fill up a room more visually, which is bad news for tiny spaces, but can be super helpful if you’re trying to make a sprawling room feel more intimate.

If you decide to skip the sectional, and go with a love seat or standard size sofa, one way you can add that extra level of coziness is to make good use of an ottoman. Ottomans are one of my favor types of furniture ever because of their so versatile. They’re easy to move, so they can prop up your feet while you watch the latest royals interview, they can serve as overflow seating for the next dinner party that you’ll throw probably sometime in 2022, and so many of them come with built in storage for little living room extras like throw blankets, board games, and coasters.  You can even put a big tray on top of one and use it as a coffee table. Your ottoman can match your sofa, or it be a special accent piece that stands out like an exclamation point. It’s really the furniture equivalent of a Broadway Swing. And an ottoman can even scamper across the room and be used as the foot stool for an accent chair in your living room. And let’s be honest, I think anyone who loves interior design can get excited about an accent lounge chair. They are so fun and really low stakes. The sofa is doing all the heavy lifting in terms of where you live day to day. An accent chair can be so many things, because it’s used so much less often. I’ve alway been a huge wingback chair person myself. I just like the coziness of a high-back, it makes me feel protected. But, I’m seeing all these low back horse shoe shape chairs,  some of which aren’t even fully upholstered. Like those rattan ones that seem to pop up in every magazine shoot and look more like outdoor chairs than something you would want to sit in after a long day. But thats the fun of it, low stakes. You can pick what you love. But, please don’t match it to your sofa! Furniture room sets do not scream “I Love Interior Design.” They scream “This was what the guy at the furniture store told me to do!”

Okay so all that said, we aren’t just lying around in our living rooms all day. We are also eating, drinking, working, writing, maybe even playing cards if you’re really getting wild. All of these activities need a team of tables to support them.  I’m a traditionalist when it comes to living room table set up. I love a nice strong coffee table in the center of everything. The general rule of thumb is that anywhere there is a seat, there should be a table or ledge to place a drink directly next to it. Whether that ends up being a coffee table, a side table, or a nearby credenza is up to you and your creativity. This concept or theory of always having a place set a glass was developed back in the Dorothy Draper days, where entertaining was the main focus of interior design. But it holds true for living rooms now, because there’s nothing more awkward that sitting the middle of a sofa and having to reach what feels like six feet over to pick up and put down your coffee mug. You want to give about 18” between your sofa and coffee table. The height of your table should be close to the height of the part of the sofa it’s next to. So if it’s a coffee table, you’ll want it close to the height of the seat of your sofa. If its a side table, you want it close to the height of the arm of your sofa. Give yourself three feet between the coffee table and your media set up, or any adjacent walls in the room. Anything closer will feel claustrophobic when you’re moving around the space.

Living room set up in general is something I get asked the most about. It really can make or break your room, but just remember there’s nothing new under the sun. If it feels like you’re trying pack a three pound bag with five pounds of sugar -  reduce, remove, and relocate.

In general, I encourage every to play with moving furniture away from the walls if you have the space. A floating a sofa in the middle of a room can act as a lovely space divider and look much more designed than just pushing everything up against the walls. Maybe be so bold as to not orient all the furniture in the room around the TV, although to be fair, I should take my own advice. I’ve long struggled with clunky TV’s as the focal point of this room, but there are great models available now that look like hung art work or mirrors when they are turned off and mounted to the wall, which is a great space saver too.

Lastly just a quick note on storage. Don’t use the living room as a place for archival storage. Taking up space with storage for things that don’t get used on a regular basis can really take the purpose out of the room. But things like books, pottery, vases, plants feel right at home in the living room.

Thanks so much for joining me today, I hope you got a lot out of this episode, and if you did, you can always give me a five star rating on Apple Podcasts. It helps other people find this podcast ,which in turn help support me to keep making this show. I love you guys so much - until next time!