Tackling a Challenging Great Room

Here's a quick little decorating quiz for you...What do these three things all have in common: really big rooms, really small rooms, and indoor traffic patterns?  The answer is that all three of these present challenges to the process of furniture arranging, and as a result nearly every home has at least one room for which finding a comfortable, attractive and functional furniture arrangement is difficult. 
Today's architectural styles, often incorporating very sizeable great room configurations in their layouts, are wonderful for achieving a sense of openness, as well as for accommodating many activities and functions in one large area.  The challenge inherent in great rooms, however, is in arranging your furniture.  It can be a tricky thing to play up the spaciousness of these rooms, while still fostering a sense of coziness and comfort.
Big open spaces typically have much less wall space than did the rooms of years past.  So, gone is the rule of thumb that many of us grew up with, which seemed to dictate that all of our furniture was lined up along the outside of the room.  The new standard of furnishing a great room is to float at least some of your furniture in the center of the room, rather than against a wall.

Begin by figuring out what spaces you want to define in your room.  Create a conversation grouping of comfortable upholstered furniture which is centered on the room's focal point.  This can effectively be accomplished by floating a sofa in the middle of the room, facing the room's focal point, whether that be a fireplace, an entertainment center or a wall of windows with an incredible view. 
Next, add secondary upholstered seating, such as a couple of easy chairs and an ottoman which face the sofa, and then plug in occasional tables. Think about having one of those be a sofa table, which can be situated behind the floating sofa to create a more finished look and provide space for accessorizing. 

Before leaving this area of your room, check to make sure that each of the seating pieces can gracefully face all others, to allow for comfortable conversation.  Also visualize where the walking patterns will be, and make sure that you have allowed a minimum of 18-24" between furniture pieces in the traffic areas. 
Now that you have the major conversation grouping established in your great room, it's time to consider the other activities that will take place there.  Consider a table and chairs that can accommodate casual dining, game playing, homework and bill paying.  Or, is this the place that you want to have a computer center or music area?
The key to furniture arrangement in great rooms is to identify the activities that will take place there, the furniture that will accommodate those activities, and the traffic patterns that will be generated by them.  Taking each of these into account, then thinking outside the box to decide where each piece of furniture should fit into the puzzle will lead you to an arrangement that will suit your home to its best potential.
Once you have your basic furniture arrangement determined, it's time to consider a few other elements that will give your great room an awesome finished look.  Whether you have hard surface flooring or carpet, area rugs in your conversation grouping and dining areas can add color, pattern, and a much-needed visual center of gravity to further define these spaces.
If, as in many great rooms, you have wonderful expanses of windows, dramatic window treatments that accentuate but don't dominate those windows are certainly called for.  Be sure that they are properly scaled.  A window treatment designed for yesterday's typical 72" wide by 84" high windows will look silly adorning today's much larger openings.
Lastly, make careful choices of accessories that will put the finishing touches on your room.  Especially if you have high ceilings, make sure that you do the architecture of your room justice by choosing appropriately proportional accessories, artwork and organic elements, and by placing them in such a way as to create graceful eye movement through your entire room.