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Long living room with a clear passage beside tan cantilever chairs, a brown two-seat sofa, round wire-base coffee table, walnut-coloured panelling, chartreuse garden wall and framed geological photography.
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ROOM 75 · Living Room

A long sitting room, without the corridor

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A long, low living room with post-war ranch-house proportions.

Long living rooms often make poor conversation rooms: the furniture retreats to the walls and everyone sits too far apart. A compact sofa, two cantilever chairs and one round table gather this room to one side, leaving a clear route to the garden.

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THE DESIGN

The useful question is not how much furniture will fit along the walls. It is where people should sit in relation to one another, and how everyone else will get past. Here, the book recess and garden door give the left edge a clear purpose. Moving the armchairs in from that edge creates a conversation group without making it an obstacle.

The Henley sofa and Buffalo chairs share a brown family but differ in finish and construction. The sofa is upholstered in faux leather; the chairs use tan leather on a black iron cantilever frame. Their open bases repeat the Jersey table’s wirework. With no rug outlining the group, those shapes and the distance between the seats have to make the arrangement readable.

Timber panelling gives the long wall a steady rhythm. The fractured surface in Earth Story cuts across it, and chartreuse makes the garden end feel deliberately coloured rather than merely bright. An Ehadi lamp with a separate striped Sanja shade sits beside the sofa, where it can serve the seating without sending a cable across the route. This is a room organised around company, with passage allowed for from the start.

WHY THE ROOM WORKS

The way through belongs beside the seats.

Colour palette

  • Chartreuse
  • Tobacco
  • Tan leather
  • Walnut
  • Chalk
  • Black iron
01

Protect the route behind the chairs

The passage follows the left wall, behind the seating group. Someone heading outside need not thread between a pair of knees and the coffee table.

02

Choose a sofa for the group

At 152cm wide, the Henley is a compact two-seater. The pair of armchairs supplies the remaining seats without stretching the conversation to the far corners.

03

Put a circle among the long lines

The Jersey table interrupts the direction of the floorboards and wall panels. Its pinched wire base leaves the floor visible beneath the surface.

04

Use the end wall as a destination

Chartreuse gathers around the garden glazing. That coloured plane gives the view a finish, while the pale side wall marks the route towards it.

05

Let the photograph break the grid

Earth Story’s mineral layers and white quartz vein run across the timber’s vertical rhythm. One medium-sized work is enough; the wall does not need a row of pictures to occupy its length.

WHAT TO BORROW

Draw the route to the door first, then arrange a conversation close enough to cross without raising your voice. The leftover strip beside the chairs can be more useful than an extra seat.

THE PIECES BEHIND THE DESIGN

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