If your long and narrow living room doesn’t have a ton of doors or openings, you have the opportunity to do something very cool and very cozy. Jackie Cantwell’s small Brooklyn railroad apartment has a long and narrow living room, and she’s utilized every square inch by incorporating not one, not two, but three small seating pieces up against the living room’s three walls. A standard three-seat sofa anchors the main far wall. For the other two sides, there’s a small loveseat and across from that, a long bench, all creating a U-shaped conversation area.
Smartly, a small round coffee table allows for easy flow around the seating area. This wouldn’t work as well if there were doorways or other openings obstructing the flow of the room, but in this example, it works beautifully.
Credit: Image Credit: Apartment Therapy
2. Hug the Wall (And Skip a Sofa)
If your living room is really narrow, your best bet for furniture arranging might be an unlikely one (and the opposite of most furniture arranging advice): Shove the furniture all up against one wall. While you normally don’t want to push all your furniture up against your walls, sometimes you just don’t have any other choice.
The living room in this small Barcelona apartment is a perfect example of this. This living room is so narrow that it’s more like a hallway than a room, so to preserve the ability to walk through the spaces, the best bet for the furniture is placed all along the back wall, leaving a nice open walkway from room to room.
But the renter of this space brilliantly disguises the room’s wall-hugging furniture by incorporating chunky, oversized armchairs and a small side table placed at the diagonal. While a long sofa may have fit in this space, that arrangement would have reinforced the straight line of the walkway. Instead, the surprising furniture shapes break up the space and create a cozy hang-out space.
(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)
3. Create Separate Zones
Often, long rooms are a blessing in disguise, because they can serve as open-plan spaces. Instead of having one larger-but-awkward living room, why not create a smaller living area, plus a den, study area, or breakfast nook?
In the sketch above, we have a traditional TV area (which you can create with a smaller sofa to save space)inte, plus a cozy den-like conversation nook, complete with surrounding wall-to-wall bookshelves to really delineate the space. You can also zone these separate areas with rugs, lights and/or color so it feels intentional.
(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)
4. Alternate your Furniture Groupings
If possible, try to avoid having all your furniture on one side of the long wall. By alternating furniture groupings, as the space above does, it forces the traffic flow to take on an “S” shape, and avoids half the room just feeling like a straight hallway. It’s a sneaky way to ensure you actually use more of the space.
(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)
5. Arrange Things Across the Space
When working with a long space, it’s best to arrange things cross-wise when possible, which visually pushes the walls outward, making the room seem wider.
Instead of one sofa against the longer wall, the space above uses two shorter ones, placed width-wise in the space. This visually pushes the walls outward, a trick that’s repeated with the console table behind the sofa, and the long bookshelf on the far wall.
6. Work with the Middle
Just because a room is long, doesn’t mean you need to fill it all with furniture. The space above centers the furniture arrangement in the middle, leaving the sides as open, but not dead, space. This works particularly well in a symmetrical room, when the furniture can be centered around a window or fireplace.
7. Utilize an L-Shaped Sofa
A proper corner sofa, even more so than one with a chaise, can really use the space in a long room well. The room above uses one, and several of the other tips above, to create a usable layout. Notice how the furniture arrangement at the other end of the room (two chairs, a side table and a console) mimic but flip the shape of the sofa, too.Read the49comments
Apartment Therapist Community
Create the home you love with tips from our experts and other home enthusiasts!
Filed in: