The Television and Fireplace Location Dilemma
Your Family Room or Great Room may be difficult to design if you want to arrange furniture to view television and your fireplace at the same time. You are presented with what I call the Television and Fireplace Location Dilemma.
Traditionally, fireplaces were placed in the center of the wall. The furniture was then grouped around it. When television first entered the American home, the screens were small and the television was simply another piece of furniture. Today, television screens are large and arguably the most prominent feature in the room. Usually the television is placed on another wall, so it has enough space. But this means your furniture arrangement must “aim” at both the fireplace and television at the same time. This is pretty hard to do. One poor solution that often is presented is to place the television above the fireplace. This helps with the furniture arrangement, but placing the television at this height only works if you are lying in bed while watching. If you are seated in a sofa or a chair, this is too high and puts an uncomfortable strain on your neck. Are there any other solutions to this dilemma?
One way to get the fireplace and television on the same wall is to not put either one in the exact center of the room and to think of them as a combined element.
In one house I designed recently, we built one wide ”pillar” of stone from floor to ceiling and put the fireplace opening in the right half and the television in a cabinet recessed into the stone on the left half. Then we centered the entire stone element in the room. Neither the television nor the fireplace was exactly centered in the room, but both ended up in good positions for seeing them while seated in the furniture grouping. Your eye reads the combined assembly and sees it as “centered” in the room and on the wall. You could do the very same thing without the stone and instead creating with a projecting drywalled element. Or, the grouping of the fireplace and television could be built into a paneled, cabinet-like assembly that would achieve the same goal.
Thinking of the television and the fireplace opening as being parts of a larger, unitized element will make the arrangement easier to handle and much more successful. You’ll be able to arrange your furniture around this combined architectural element and have perfect viewing positions for both the television and the fireplace.
Tags: Family Room, fireplace, furniture arrangement, Great Room, house design, television
February 10th, 2010 at 4:49 pm
We will be building a house in a year and a half. I am, however, starting my process now, and your book has been VERY helpful!
With this issue, I was thinking of having the fireplace built in a corner, and the tv in the middle, placed on a “built in”. After all, let’s be honest, we don’t sit around a stare at the fireplace all night.
What’s your thinking on this design?
February 10th, 2010 at 8:43 pm
Luci – I think you are right on track. There is no real need to make the fireplace the primary focal point in a room. A corner location will make the fireplace less directional and allow you to arrange the furniture around the “real life” focal point, the television.
February 15th, 2010 at 11:58 am
Thank you, I’m glad to hear your opinion. And I was also SO glad you are against putting the TV above the fireplace. People think this solves the focal point dilemma, but it is so very uncomfortable.
I would like to ask a question about the outside “siding” of a house. I love the look of stone, and I think that stucco look goes with it. However, where we will be building, in Maryland on the water, all the info we have gotten warns against the stucco. I don’t HAVE to have stucco, but something that resembles that look. Do you have any suggestions?
Maybe it can be a blog?
BTW, I have just recently started my own blog, “Designing Our Retirement”, where I hope to share our journey along the searching, buying, and building process. Your book has helped me so much, it was the best investment I ever made! Your advice has been invaluable, and I just want to thank you for sharing your design knowledge with us.
February 15th, 2010 at 12:48 pm
Luci – Thanks for your kind comments about my book. It is really great to hear that it has been so helpful to you. And I did check out your blog. It looks like it will be very interesting.
Your suggestion about using the stucco issue as a blog post is great. I’ll write that up soon. In the meantime, let me give you the short answer. I have had really great success with stucco, even in coastal locations. I used stucco on a house in Hawaii, right on the water on the windward side of Oahu. You can’t get any more salt and water exposure than that. The waves were only about thirty yards away and the wind blows nearly every day. Everything suffers in that environment. It is ten times worse than the Atlantic coast. During construction, we had rain blow all the way through the house. But the stucco has held up fine and is a commonly used material there.
The warnings you have gotten about stucco probably are a reaction to the synthetic stucco failures that brought large law suits some years ago. In these cases, the builders depended on the stucco as the waterproofing of the walls. They omitted a layer of Tyvek or building paper underneath the stucco. The stucco is actually quite waterproof, so they depended on that. The problem was that water could get behind it by entering through window sills and door head. Once it got in, it could not get out. With water trapped in the wall, eventually the wood began to rot. The stucco got the blame, even though it was not the failing element, the windows and doors were.
Now, no one puts up stucco, synthetic or otherwise, without a proper waterproof layer beneath it. And in most cases, the stucco used is the type called “hard coat.” This is the traditional three part cement stucco used for centuries. Traditional stucco had the problem of being inflexible and prone to getting cracks. Now, the cement has epoxy additives that give it more tensile strength and cracking is not an issue.
Stucco done right will give you a long lasting exterior material that will not fade or deteriorate. I would not hesitate to use it.
June 8th, 2010 at 7:15 am
Bill,
Do you have pictures posted anywhere of the combined tv/fireplace focal point. My wife and I are building a new home and I’m really struggling with where to put the fireplace and tv in the room. I don’t want the tv above the fireplace for viewing reasons. My wife wants to move the fireplace from a side wall to the end of the room, but that would cause us to lose a window and we would end up with two focal points, the fireplace at the end of the room and the tv on a wall perpendicular to it. Your idea of a combined fireplace/tv unit side by side, sounds perfect but I haven’t been able to find anything like it on the web. FYI, our room is 15′x18′, one 18′ side open to the kitchen, the other solid with a fireplace, one 15′ section solid wall, the other with three windows. Thanks!
June 17th, 2010 at 10:41 am
Craig – I’m working on that. Check back in a few days and hopefully I’ll have some computer images of what I’m talking about.
July 12th, 2010 at 3:57 pm
Bill,
Were you able to come up with anything?