Here's a New Angle: Off-Center Arrangement Energizes a Room

Q: Our long, narrow living room has windows on both sides with a fireplace on the end wall. I'm having trouble arranging the furniture. I don't want it to look like a bus station with all the seats lined up, marching down the sides. In another column, you gave some suggestions on arranging furniture when there's a wall to back it up. What about my problem?

A: There's more than one way to skim this type of dilemma. Designer Deborah Lipner illustrates a creative solution in the calm and cool pictured living room. Its anatomy is very similar to your room's setup: longer than it is wide, with windows on both sides. (There was a good reason for that when the home was built in hot, sultry Charleston, S.C., around the time of the Civil War — the opposing windows assured cooling cross breezes).

In these air-conditioned times, the homeowners were more concerned about how to arrange their furniture in comfortable conversational groupings. Designer Lipner (of Deborah T. Lipner, Ltd.) came to the rescue. She simply positioned everything on the diagonal.

"If the furniture had been all lined up, the room would have looked flat," she explains. By settling the sofa and cocktail table on the diagonal, then playing off that angle for the rest of the arrangement, the room became more interesting and cozier, Lipner points out.

The diamond-patterned rug and the armchairs in the second seating area — in front of the fireplace — also add to the new angled idea that the designer was pursuing.

With its gray-green walls, uncurtained windows and natural linen upholstery, the room is exactly what Lipner's clients wanted: a subtle blend of contemporary and traditional, jazzed up just a bit by a zebra-skin rug and a fresh new way of playing all the angles.

Q: My husband and I are arguing about what to do with the guest closet in the front hall. We live where it's always warm, so nobody ever needs to hang up a coat. I want to turn it into a display place for my shells, but what about the door?

A: Take it off. Or replace it with a mostly glass door so everyone can enjoy your collection. It would be a smart way to recycle that unneeded space. PS: Think about adding glass shelves and lighting, too.

Q: Can we put ceramic tile in the kitchen area of our great room if it opens to the rest of the floor, which is covered in hardwood? I'm worried that wood won't stand up in a kitchen, or I'd just use it all the way through.

A: Stop worrying and start reading up on today's hardwood floors. Like so many other home furnishings products, wood now comes pretreated, so it's practically impervious to everything from pets' nails to dropped pizza.

One exception: standing water. You still can't leave puddles on hardwood for long or you risk water damage, no matter how high-tech the surface treatment. But if you wipe up spills and splashes with reasonable alacrity, your hardwood floor will go on looking good through years and years of traffic. Then, unlike other surfacing materials, you can always have it refinished and start all over again.

Wood may be one of our oldest building materials, but it's also the ultimate recyclable. For more info, check out the hardwood industry's informative website at hardwoodinfo.com. Full disclosure: I write a decorating column on hardwood that I hope you'll find helpful, too.

Rose Bennett Gilbert is the co-author of "Manhattan Style," "Hampton Style," and five other books on interior design.