5 dated living room layouts to always avoid
For years, so many of our living room layouts have focused on one thing – the TV. Everything has been centered on the dominant tech, angled towards the television without thought for whether it’s creating the most social or elegant or even comfortable space. But this is such a dated way to approach living room layouts.
For 2025 designers are reimagining what a living room layout should be like, creating new anchors, looking at spacing differently, choosing new shapes to ensure a fresher take on zoning. The result is a more contemporary approach that works for the requirements of modern life, feeding the conflicting desires of ensuring our living rooms work for relaxing and socializing but also work aesthetically.
So what living room layouts should you be avoiding if you want to create this tricky balance? We spoke with interior designers to find out about the layouts that could be making your space look dated and what you should be doing instead.
1. Having a layout that doesn’t have a sense of order
(Image credit: James McDonald. Design by Bryan O’Sullivan Studio)
It can be tempting to place furniture into a living room in the best way it fits, or so that every piece has a good vantage point of the television. But that dated approach doesn’t lead to spaces you can entertain in, and is better suited to a den than the elegant living room of 2025.
‘It’s quite appealing to impose a sense of order on a layout,’ says the New York and London-based interior designer Bryan O’Sullivan. ‘We did a house in Paris [above] which was gorgeously proportioned and we pushed a line of symmetry which felt really crisp. If you center furniture placement around a window, and work backward from where that’s positioned, you end up with a room that is super satisfying on the eye, and in some ways, on the soul, too.’
2. Not including flexible furniture that can move with you
(Image credit: Vigo Jansons)
Because of the ways of modern life, having close access to power outlets to charge our phones or use a laptop is key in any sucessful living room layout. Static seating just doesn’t lend itself to this need. So if you want to avoid your living room layout looking dated, you want plenty of flexible furniture that can move around the room with you.
And it’s not just about charging points, you might want to move around the room as the light changes or have plenty of extra options for different kinds of gatherings and different numbers of guests.
‘You need lots of spaces around your living room that you can recharge your phone while you recharge yourself,’ the designer Olga Ashby says. ‘This means extra places to perch when you have your coffee, stools that can be moved around and positioned near a power outlet if need be.’ In the past you might have wanted to keep the floor space clear for an airier look – the less furniture cluttering the space the better – but for a more flexible layout, it’s far more practical to have those extra options now.
3. Sticking to boxy silhouettes and hard lines
(Image credit: @studiocalvagno, @filippocalvagno / Photographer @studio__hahn)
The classic living room contains a lot of boxy shapes – a hard-edged sofa, a hard-edged chair or two, a big rectangular TV. But designers have been embracing more rounded forms for fresher layouts, which make living rooms look and feel more contemporary. Plus, this style of living room furniture allows for a much softer feeling layout and more potential to create mini zones within rooms.
‘Curves are useful when it comes to living room furniture – curved edges help you create a room within a room,’ says Arianna Lelli Mammi, co-founder of the design practice Studiopepe. ‘Place a curved table together with a couple of curved armchairs and you have a little zone that doesn’t cut anything off with hard angles, but helps to make the most of the space.’
4. Ignoring the windows
(Image credit: Mary Wadsworth)
While designer Bryan O’Sullivan talked about starting with the window, the designer Ash Wilson thinks that windows are actually a more modern focal point than, say, a TV or fireplace, which is what dated living room layouts would have been centered around.
‘Window seats are a love of mine,’ she explains. ‘They create the intention to curl up with a book, while not being pointed at the TV.’ The designer Irene Gunter agrees. ‘People always respond well to natural light, so I’ll angle chairs towards windows instead of at, say, a television,’ she says.
5. Having too much space between furniture
(Image credit: Design by Christian Bense)
One surefire way to make your living room layout look dated is to have a sea of floor space on show. Of course you don’t want your living room to look cluttered either, but a balance between a room looking full but not overly so is the aim.
As designer Christian Bense explains, ‘Don’t be scared about how close together the seats are in a living room – proximity leads to intimacy.’
‘And if you have furniture on which people can sit side by side and facing each other, you allow for moments of breakaway conversations as well as wider group chats. What you don’t want is a three-sided living space, where everyone is directed at a fireplace or television. A day bed or ottoman on that fourth edge doesn’t block the view towards whatever is on that wall, while offering another opportunity for relaxed lounging.’
The main takeaway we are getting from all this wonderful advice is if you want to avoid your living room layout looking dated, avoid basing it around the TV. For a far more flexible and sociable layout, opt to focus the furniture around the people who use the space, a layout that feels relaxed and encourages conversation, or at least doesn’t only encourage screen time.
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