Choosing Seating For My One Bedroom Apartment

Background

When choosing furniture for a space, there will always been the tension of finding something that fits both in vibe and physically in space. Sometimes you have the luxury of being able to make decisions within that trade-off, but often times, those decisions have already been made for you. Because of the way my apartment is laid out, there is a very specific amount of room that is available for a dining area versus a living area. Additionally, because of the entrances between rooms, there are only so many possible layouts that you can have. In this article I am going to walk through some of the decisions I had to make in order to maximize the utility out of the space I had in my apartment. Since I knew that I wanted to host social gatherings at my house, I knew that I wanted to optimize for seating, as well as comfort.

Living Room

I initially had a double papasan chair and a Lovesac bean bag when I first moved in, and I really have a special place in my heart for those pieces. They are both so comfortable and also have personal history attached to them, but I just couldn’t justify how much space they took up versus how much seating they provided for people when they came over. I think that it makes sense if you live alone and don’t plan on hosting that much, but for me, I wanted people to be able to come over and sit and chat, so it quickly dawned on me that I would not be able to hold on to the papasan and beanbag any longer.

What I really wanted was an L-shaped sectional, or really any kind of sectional, but after I moved into my apartment, I quickly realized the i just really don’t have the space for larger couch pieces because of the way the apartment is laid out. L-shaped sectionals are so comfortable, but they are not optimized for conversation, in my opinion. Instead, they are optimized for comfort and watching TV, which are perfectly honorable goals, but of course, by focusing on certain goals, you must necessarily compromise on achieving other goals.

With my dreams of an L-shaped section not dead, just postponed, I instead opted to use a sofa across from the TV and then have a separate seating area with two chairs and coffee table to the side. I at first was using a Target Threshold futon as the couch because I got it for free from an old roommate after we moved out. It was nice, especially because it was free, but I didn’t like how the springs felt, so I knew that I didn’t want to have it forever. Then, as luck would have it, my aunt & uncle were going to be buying a house that came 80% furnished, so they were in the process of giving away a lot of their old furniture. That is the story of how I got a motorized reclining two-seater leather couch, something that definitely would have been out of my budget if I had been purchasing it. It has a center console for holding drinks and remotes, which on most days I really appreciate, but on some days wish was a third seat because while the couch is ~78” long, it only seats two people.

Dining Room

I asked my friend if he would be able to look on Facebook Marketplace for a dining table for me. I knew that I wanted a round table that had a leaf so that the table area could be increased if need be. I knew that I wanted a round table because it allows you to seat more people than at a rectangular table of the same size. Additionally, when everyone is seated around the table it feels very intimate. My friend found a great dining table that seats six people with or without the leaf for $325 for the dining table, leaf, and chairs. Since my dining area is a bit small, I opted not to have the leaf in, but I still use all six seats. The wood has a darker stain and is very prone to water damage, so I just keep a tablecloth on it at all times.

Also a part of the dining area is my breakfast bar, where I have two wooden stools so you can eat at the bar. It is at the perfect height where you can see over the sofa and watch TV while eating.

Future Options

The next space I want to invest in is the idea of stow-able seating. Right now I have two footstool/ottomans that are like cubes that I got from my parents and I am using them as stow-able seating. I can put them out of the way in storage when they are not being used, but can bring them out when I have a larger than normal amount of guests.

I really like the look of these washed corduroy floor cushions from Urban Outfitters, but that’s only if your guests like to sit on the floor. There’s also the Tommy stacking stools also from Urban Outfitters which are cool because they nest within each other, but I don’t think that they look all that sturdy.