Love to entertain friends and family at home?
Don’t love struggling to find room for them all?
A great room could be the answer.
This is a large internal space designed for recreation, entertainment, and — crucially — relaxation. But some homeowners overlook adding a great room to their property, either because they don’t know what one is or they assume it’s just a fancy name for a second living room.
A great room is
so much more than that: it blends the functions of a living room, family room, study, and media room into one area. It’s the perfect place to play poker, watch movies on a big screen, or just enjoy a few beers with friends. And fitting a great room could even help to boost your home’s value if you plan to sell in the future.
Sounds good, right? But transforming the concept into a reality isn’t easy without a little expert help. Join us as we explore how you can create the ultimate great room in your home.
Make each zone stand out with distinctive touches
Your great room will serve multiple purposes. You might have a zone that’s best for playing cards with pals because it offers a great view of the wall-mounted television, essential for watching sports between hands. Maybe you want your reading area to overlook the garden for those quiet Sunday afternoons. And the kids’ gaming zone should probably be marked out clearly so they keep to their own space.
That’s why it’s so important to label each area with its own style. For example, a pastel colored rug and comfortable armchair would denote the reading zone, while multicolored bean bags could mark the kids’ gaming area. Diversifying colors and furniture in this way can help your great room feel inclusive to the whole family
without it becoming a free for all.
Keep the space open
One of the key traits of a great room is that it’s an open space. If you cluster furniture together against walls in each corner or cram too much in, that sense of openness and multi-purpose design could vanish.
Take care to spread your furniture out and use it as a way to reinforce the purpose of each part of the room. For example, don’t have the couch too close to the dining space, especially if you happen to be a messy eater.
“Floating” the furniture like this leaves space around each piece and cultivates the openness that any comfortable great room demands.
Alternate your floor levels
The most amazing great rooms incorporate multiple levels in a subtle but effective way.
How? You could have the family area lower than, say, the kids’ space to create a clear distinction between the two. That would also help to make the room feel bigger and make better use of the space available.
Being on separate levels, even if only by a few inches, is a fantastic way to create a little privacy between family-members taking part in different activities. A multi-level layout also lends the great room its own feel compared to other parts of the house — which makes it
even more exciting.
Experiment with textures and patterns
The sheer size of great rooms makes them a perfect fit for experimentation. You don’t need to go too wild, but something as small as diversifying your textures and patterns works beautifully.
One terrific way to implement this approach is to maintain a fixed color scheme throughout the room, such as black and white, but maximizing the visual impact with various materials. You could add a faux-fur rug with a coarse texture, a couch made of gleaming vinyl, a set of traditional wooden rocking chairs, metallic bookshelves, a glass coffee table, etc. , all in that consistent color scheme.
This maintains a sense of organization and style, without making the room appear too uniform or repetitive.
Emphasize natural light
Great rooms tend to be bright and airy, with lots of natural light streaming in through tall or wall-length
windows. This helps to make the space look bigger, more modern, and reduces the amount of artificial light you need to pay for.
Natural light is especially important if you plan to cultivate a minimalist aesthetic in your great room. The glow from outside will bounce off surfaces and complement neutral tones brilliantly. Don’t feel as if you need to completely restructure the room to accommodate bigger windows, but if it’s viable, go for it.
Avoid cramming too much into the space
You might not have the biggest house on your street or too much spare space to play with, but you can still make a great room work. Just be aware of that when you’re planning your furniture and decor.
If you try to pack too much in, you could ruin the entire effect of the great room — it should be spacious and open, ideally with high ceilings. Otherwise, excessive furniture and fittings could leave your great room feeling more like an extension of the current living or dining room rather than a multi-functional area.
Work with what you have and be selective with your furniture choices. Think carefully about what you most want to do with the room that you can’t necessarily do with others. Focus on making this a real point of appeal within the center of your home.
Creating the ultimate great room for your property can be a challenge, but we hope these tips help to make it all a little easier for you.
The best tactic is working with an experienced construction team to realize your vision. DWR Construction has helped many homeowners transform their property with stylish, elegant, modern great rooms of all sizes.
Our
Houston room additions are the ideal solution for creating the guest room of your dreams. To learn more about our custom-designed additions and to set up a design consultation, give us a call or complete our online form today.
