ᐅ Furnishing our open-plan living and dining area with a split-level design

Hello,

After countless discussions with our architect regarding the floor plan of our little house (...we are building on top of an existing partial basement and foundation slab),

the living/dining area is 50cm (20 inches) lower than the surrounding rooms (kitchen and hallway), so it is a split-level design.

The furniture layout the architect drew is doable but we are not 100% happy with it. Since I have already received great ideas here during the planning stage, I am turning to you again with this topic. Do you perhaps have some suggestions on how to arrange the room?

A few details about the background:

- The wall to the kitchen (which will be arranged differently than shown) is a knee wall about 1 m (3 feet 3 inches) high.
- The large "corner windows" on the right and top right of the plan offer a wonderful view over a valley.
- By the way, we have a large U-shaped sectional sofa.

We have of course also thought about it ourselves but always get stuck with the placement of the TV.
1. The obvious choice would be the wall at the bottom of the plan, but then sitting on the couch you would have no way to enjoy the beautiful view.

2. Another idea was to build a half-height knee wall from left to right and mount the TV on it. On the opposite side of the knee wall (top of the plan), a bench could be placed as seating for the dining table. The couch would then go along the bottom wall of the plan. The problem here is that further furnishing with cabinets would be difficult, and I doubt you could comfortably watch TV on the couch without obstruction from the knee wall.

3. Another possibility would be to place the couch in the top right corner of the plan and hang the TV on the terrace wall (left side of the plan). However, the view would then also be behind you.

I would be very happy if you could take a look at our plan and maybe share some ideas with us.

Thanks in advance.

Best regards,
Grobi

Hopefully, you are not expecting too much space in the garage. The cars are drawn to a smaller scale.

@toxicmolotow
Yes, we are aware of that; I think the cars shown are an old Mini and an E-Class. However, the garage layout was predetermined due to the basement, so there’s nothing that can be done about it.

Maybe you have some ideas regarding the furnishing of the living/dining room?!

Could you please provide the dimensions of the furniture you plan to use in the future?

No, I better not say anything about that, except that you should add 10cm (4 inches) to every measurement for all furniture when planning, because a 2m (6 ft 7 in) wardrobe won’t fit on a 2m (6 ft 7 in) wall.

And that’s definitely not a mid-size car... although... actually, it is, from 1980...

New vehicles are significantly wider.

@matte1987
Thanks for your feedback 🙂 We can rely on you.

Sure. There are a few pieces of furniture that we definitely want to keep for now:

- U-shaped sofa (approx. 3.40m (11 ft 2 in) wide, approx. 2.20m (7 ft 3 in) deep)
- TV with 55-inch diagonal (148cm (58 inches))
- Dining table 180cm x 90cm (71 in x 35 in)

In addition, we plan to move our current living room wall unit initially before getting something new in the medium term.

- Lowboard 220cm (7 ft 3 in) wide, 35cm (14 in) high
- Cabinet display unit 180cm (5 ft 11 in) high, 80cm (31 in) wide
- Wall cabinet 80cm (31 in) high, 80cm (31 in) wide

Best regards
Grobi