The key to every beautiful home is a lovely sitting room for family and friends to gather and unwind with a couple of drinks and deep conversation. But how do you create a great room that’s both stunning and functions well for your lifestyle? Between work-from-home days, family dinners, and hosting cocktail hour, chances are your front room gets a lot of use. We’ve assembled several tips to help you delineate your great room from the rest of the house so that it can serve its purpose: recreation and relaxation.
1. Open Floor Plan
Cellular Shades by Graber
First off, you might be wondering what is the great room in a house? A great room is typically a large, open space in your home designed for entertainment and gathering. The concept of an open floor plan can commonly be found in the great room, combining an area for eating with space for sitting and conversation. While great rooms are often confused with living rooms and family rooms, the great room is where the elements of both of these spaces are combined.
Since your great room is meant to be used every day, functionality is critical. Several open floor plan ideas include arranging your furniture away from the walls and creating a cohesive style from floor to ceiling. Commonly, great rooms have higher ceilings, allowing for better acoustics and a feeling of spaciousness.
2. Diffuse Plenty of Natural Light
Hanger Ash Porcelain by Emser Tile
Include large windows, open doors, and well-designed spatial planes into your great room’s architecture. Allow natural light to be drawn in through large bay windows or skylights to diffuse your living room in an organic glow. Arched entryways and paned door windows offer excellent space for natural light to flow through. In addition, use soft color palettes like blue-grays, lavenders, and sage-greens as these lighter hues draw on light and can brighten up your space, so it feels less dark and cavernous.
3. Install Same Floor Throughout
Kalta Bianco Polished Marble Emser Tile
It’s essential to consider the flooring in your great room, as this can either be a focal point or a blank canvas for your design style. Install one floor throughout your entire great room to create a unified theme. Using one floor type throughout works visually to pull separate spaces (like the dining area, the living area, and the breakfast nook) together. Wide-plank hardwood floors, large-format tiles, and natural stone all make exquisitely appealing solutions in the great room. Dark walnut or ebony hardwood is a popular choice for great rooms as they add a nice contrast and give off a polished look with their richly dark grain texture.
4. Consider a Gorgeous Mantel
Pacific Rim Silver Engineered Stone Concrete by Emser Tile
Have you ever wondered why so many great rooms have fireplaces or mantels? This is because not only are mantelpieces a beautiful focus of the design, but they also function to delineate space to the conversation area. Drawing couches, loveseats, and chairs around the fireplace builds a cozy conversation circle and lends a warm touch to your room.
5. Bring in Texture
Landfair in Espresso by Louis A. Dabbieri Line
While you can pick out tasteful furniture, lighting, and color schemes to create a gorgeous great room with soaring ceilings, your space can still feel cold if you don’t add dimension with texture. Area rugs, greenery, throw pillows, blankets, and sculptures are just several ways to include texture. When searching for an area rug in the great room, keep in mind that 8 × 10-foot and 10 x 12-foot sizes are frequently ideal for large spaces. Of course, you can always layer several area rugs to create a custom look that’s more casual and increases the soft composition of your great room.
