Furnishing to give life and depth to a room.
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Next time you enter a room that feels lifeless and flat take a good look at it. In many cases you will find it lacking interest at the edges. Or think about sitting around and having a conversation with a group of friends. How far away can they be for an easy conversation?
A rule of thumb is that the maximum distance you normally want to be separated by for a comfortable conversation is about ten feet. So when looking at furniture arrangements or determining room sizes for seating areas I start with bubble diagrams with roughly sketched ten foot circles on my plans to help with the basic blocking out of my space and furniture arrangements. Your seating group may be larger but then you may want to think of it as having two conversation areas within it.
Ideally your main seating group should be away from the walls of the room and oriented towards some sort of focal point such as a view, fireplace, or entertainment center. Among other advantages that allows you to have circulation around the periphery rather then through the center of your seating area. Once you have the focal point seating area (or areas) blocked out you need to look at adding interest to the edges of the space.
Giving the edges of a room a sense of depth ether through architecture or furnishings tends to makes a room more inviting and engaging. Moving secondary furniture groupings for one or two people to the edges, and adding pairs of vertical elements like book cases or display cabinets will start to define niches and boundaries. This type of arrangement breaks the room into a series of spaces, giving a layered and comfortable feel to the room.
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