Do you have a sectional? Do you like it? Having finished with the playroom, I want to make some changes to the living room as well. Currently, we have an 86″ couch (on the small side as couches go) and an antique rocking chair. The latter is not the most comfortable seating in the world. We have four use cases:
1.) H and I hanging out at night. We both would like to be able to put our feet up. We can’t do this with our smallish couch.
2.) The four of us hanging out. This is really not an issue.
3.) Our parents visiting. That means seating for four adults and one to two kids.
4.) Entertaining. We rarely entertain more than one couple at a time, but we have some friends with older children, so that’s four adults and say three kids.
Our room is 15 x 15.5 feet with a fireplace on one end and a large, low window at 90 degrees to the fireplace. The real estate photos – again, remember they take these to make everything look bigger than it is.
Note the sectional. Every since I plopped down on that sectional at 8 months pregnant, I’ve wanted one just like it. I’ve been using Planner 5D to model up options.
As far as sectionals go, there’s a sectional that is really just a couch with a chaise:
However, that doesn’t have any more seating than a standard couch. With regard to guests, some people might feel uncomfortable just coming in and putting their feet up straightaway.
Modeled up in Planner 5D with a chaise. The white things on the left are the fireplace flanked by two bookcases. The brown square thing is an ottoman meant to be used as a coffee table. The white rectangular thing on the far wall is meant to be a daybed for extra seating in front of the window, and the brown roundy thing is a chair. We want to have one stiff chair that is good for older people to sit in.
Then there is the small L-shaped option. With a wedge, this starts to look a bit better:
I think that you can argue that four people could sit on this comfortably. After all, our current couch is only 86 inches. This thing is huge by comparison. The room starts to look more crowded, but not too bad. (Ignore the difference between the sectional appearance and the photo. The dimensions are correct.)
Alternatively, some places sell options with a “bumper” which look like this. The bumper is the chaise thing on the right.
This thing is bigger – 110″ by 102″ – but the low chaise doesn’t block the view into our living room the way a couch with a back does. It looks like this:
However, I think it really sticks out too far and makes it hard to enter and exit the room. The chair would need to go on the other side, perhaps.
I’d appreciate any input from people who have sectionals. I’ve never lived in a house with one. H and I would really just like to be able to sprawl out together on the same piece of furniture in the evenings.
I’ve found an ottoman and chair on Anthropologie that I love, but they cost a fortune. I’m sure I can find some cheaper alternatives, but here they are nonetheless:
Oh, I should add, I found my sectional plus ottoman inspiration in a book, but here’s something online that’s similar:
We have a massive sectional…like, can seat 6-7 adults comfortably. But we also have a pretty massive living room that can handle it. Ours has not held up particularly well to everyday use — it’s woven fabric, and the piping on all the cushions has broken and pokes out which drives me CRAZY. The cushions are also pretty misshapen and lumpy. It wasn’t crazy expensive so I feel like 6.5 years of everyday use is good enough and I think we’ll be in the market for something new pretty soon. I have been debating whether to just get another giant sectional or do something different — smaller sectional plus chairs? Not sure.
I would also add that, at least in our house, the chaise turns out to be more of a dumping ground for random stuff rather than a place to rest your legs. I probably would not get one with a chaise again.
So I grew up in a house with both types of sectionals at various times.
My solution would be the one with the chase extension, but with the couch side of the sectional have one with a foot rest that goes up. That way you have two adult locations for putting your feet up. Its funny because I am only at Sarah’s house when she picks up a little, but sitting on the chase part of her sectional is one of my favorite spots in the house. And when I was a kid, that was one of my favorite reading locations.
If you do the kind that is more the L shaped, you want one with both “ends” having the foot rest that goes up. I feel like that shape looks a little dated, like something out of an 80s sitcom. Maybe that’s just the perception in my head.
One thing that I always noted about sectionals is the more sprawled and comfortable you get, the more likely that you slide it a little creating a canyon between the sections. I think this becomes more pronounced with wiggling kids. So plan for that.