Oh, and Flo those carpet tiles - genius! Definitely looking into those.

This Pottery Barn sofa that came in my email this morning made me laugh. Could be our new gymnastics mat. ;)

I had the Poang chair when it still was called Poem. That was a loooong time ago!

OK, yes, good laugh, but don't do that fold out sofa please! Picture of window wall very helpful. I thought you just had one large window bank so that eliminates that entire wall. You have very little wall space in this room, which you already know makes doing anything extra difficult, but we do it all the time. So, here is the homework I'm giving you (:-) When you can, take everything out of the white storage units one by one and place them in one of 4 piles. One with a sign marked "trash"; one with a sign marked "donate", one with a sign marked "keep but store elsewhere"; and last "store in this room". If the kids are old enough to help, this is a good way to help them learn the lesson of "giving". We instill this value at young ages so it is a good time to help them "give" things away. (lesson #1 of the day) haha Next, I will tell you, you aren't the first person who starts things to avoid hard decision-making! So, stop everything and make a list of all the projects you have going on. Then Prioritize the list. #1 - Most Important, on down to last. This will be enlightening. Then, go after #1 and do everything you can to "substantially finish" that project. Substantially Finish means, you have made all the decisions, and are waiting to complete "implementation" and finishing touches. Then take on #2. Just my little "lesson of the day"! lol This exercise really helps put things into perspective and lessens stress and helps drive things to conclusion. Hope that helps. Meanwhile I am going to do a "revision" of the floor plan for you. Be back in a bit.

Here is Rev. 2. I have changed the window wall to show those windows. I think I would reduce the number of panels. Looks really crowded. But up to you. I slid the table over and separated the 3 stacks of white units. I guessed at their sizes to be about 30" wide x 18" deep. I put two on the one wall and one on the back wall, with a dead space corner. I put a small 4' x 6' rug. (dotted line in front of love seat). I'm not sure a rug is needed in the space while it is
"kids" room unless you go whole hog and basically carpet most of the space. The reason is; a) you need walk-thru space from entry to "kitchen or dining room" (what room is beside this room?). And b) you need space to move around in room. If you want larger floor space, the I would do larger rug or none. Also, you might consider a coffee table/storage piece on wheels. Then, you could roll it out of the way or even out of the room, so you have larger floor space. In reality, this is a fairly small room. It is intended, I think, as a small formal living room? Anyway, I think with some "purging" and two console/storage units beside the love seat (keeping love seat under 60" long) will be a good solution. Then as the children mature, you can supplement pieces to accommodate their growth.

I like this one because it has wheels but also has storage. Something like this might work better for you than the pop up type, if you think you would want to easily move it so you have more space on the floor?

Thanks Flo. Believe it or not I am constantly purging! I typically take 4 or 5 large loads to Goodwill every year. It's insane how many toys the kids have. One friend of ours literally gave my son every single car from the movie Cars. We counted and there were almost 100 of them! But I will do it again and see where it gets us. Their rooms and the basement are packed with stuff too. The house really isn't all that big. And having a 'formal' living room doesn't help.

If you can see the floor plan I uploaded I wrote in the rooms that connect to this room. There's a micro hall extending from the window wall into the foyer and the dining room is beyond the other pass thru.

Question about going sans rug - with the wood floors and high walls the room echos like crazy and makes the kid noises louder. Any ideas to deaden the sound? We have a 9x12 rug in there and the echo is crazy since I've taken the art off the walls for painting.

You're so right about the hard decisions. We need a desk and art for the master, we're waiting on furniture arrival and cabinet work for the family room, can't figure out the foyer to save my life. Ugh. Can I fly you out here and have you make all the decisions for me??!! I don't know how you designers do it - there are so many choices and I get easily overwhelmed by it all.

The round table and chairs is a great idea. Good for puzzles and homework and if I could find one with some storage then maybe I could get the art supplies out of the buffet in the dining room.

I don't remember taking over my parents house to this extreme. I can't decide if the house is really just too small for us or if we're terrible at utilizing the space or purging or what.

Get your kids yoga mats for their gymnastic endeavors!

We have 4 kids, so I completely understand the problem of "stuff". Maybe some of the "toys" could be stored in their bedrooms? How many children? How many bedrooms for them? I didn't see a house plan posted on this thread? Can you give me the exact name of your other dilemma so I can check it out please? Yes, I would love to run over and get your home finished for you! lol When you do what I do, these things are easy. But when you haven't it is like anything, it is a bit scary and costly and time consuming. Time is the biggest factor. With a family, time is a scarce commodity. Well, perhaps we can help you work through each space and get you "substantially complete" sooner rather than later! It is a "process" and it really is never done. So just tell yourself "it's a process and I am working toward being 'substantially complete'!" lol Keep your sense of humor mainly. As for noise reduction, if you have any quilts or other texture type wall hangings that helps a lot in noise reduction. The flor.com carpet tiles are dense and would help quite a bit too I believe rather than standard rugs.

Just commenting to follow along and because I can so relate, slowstartr! We have three young kids and so much stuff! We're lucky to have a finished basement, so the toys stay down there for the most part, but even they get overwhelmed when it's a mess. A few things have (sort of) helped: being ruthless about the purging, rotating toys (periodically swapping what's out in the playroom and packing/storing the rest), and asking our family for 'experience' gifts instead of more Legos (oh the legos!).

You're getting such great advice - I can't wait to see what you end up doing!

@Slowstartr how old are your kids and what made you paint the walls??? Sounds like you have tumblelina's in your hands. I agree with what @Bailey R says to wait the extra 3-4 years. You might just end going through the same process.

Is this the only living space in the home? Even if there is a smaller office, den, guest bedroom that could be swapped with the playroom for a few years, it would help. A kids' playroom will always look like just that (as it should!) so the idea of having a presentable first impression of your home in the same space as a playroom is a bit far-fetched. On the other hand, a tidy and beautiful office space and/or adult behaviour only tv room is easily accomplished and would be a natural thing to see upon entering a home.

Of course that assumes you have a different room to utilize as playroom.

Hi! You should check out Knockout Knobs for new fun cabinet hardware! Knockout Knobs is the perfect solution creating a fun kid-friendly space. We create custom 3-D printed knobs, pulls, and hooks to add to all of your cabinetry! You create a design and we create the product. The possibilities are endless! Look at our website to see if we have what you are looking for! Your Passion Your Design Your Hardware

I love seeing my vacuum cleaner in these pics. Ha! Oops!

So I 'only' have 2 kids but yes, they are high energy. And they both have yoga mats. :) What I really need is one of those thick gymnastics mat. But where to store it...

I'll see if I can track down a floor plan when I get home. It was a 3 BR house when we bought it but we have an au pair and needed a 4th BR so we created one. We relocated our master bath to a former sitting room off the master bedroom, chopped 1/2 of my husband's closet (poor guy) and created a bedroom out of the former bathroom with a brand new opening for a door and a decent sized closet. Both kids' rooms are tiny too. Their closets are small. My daughter has a loft bed with a vanity/desk underneath and that's working out well. But there's only so much room for storage and now there's no under-bed room. My son has bunk beds and no room underneath for storage. His closet is bursting at the seams. I'm constantly reorganizing it.

The basement is frustrating because the house sits on 2 slabs and the basement is only under one of them. The other has a crawl space underneath. Former owner was a builder and brought home a bar from a worksite and installed it in the basement. We store our extra dining room chairs behind it. We also have an unfinished work room, which is where we store our 9 (!) bikes. Road and mountain biking is our 'thing.' The rest of the basement is used for storage (Christmas decorations, skis, handed-down china, luggage, etc.), an air hockey table and more kid toys (trains with tracks, cars with tracks, hexbugs with tracks!). Sometimes I want to rip down all the walls and start over down there but at that point we might as well move!

We have a family room on the back of the house, which is where the tv lives. There's a FP in there too and it opens onto a screened porch. We tend to spend more time back there when we're hanging out. It could be more of a play room, but it just didn't evolve that way I guess. We are getting a new sectional and chair down there and I want to re-work or maybe even replace the built-ins.

Oh, and one reason we painted the room was because *someone* scratched the wall about 3 feet up and about 2 feet long. It was deep enough that it had to be spackled.

Foyer thread is "What would you do with this foyer?" I'm leaning toward a settee, floor lamp and...something...in there. I'm even struggling to find a new rug for the foyer. We take our shoes off but somehow that rug seems to always be dirty and I like that the rug we have now doesn't show much. But it's old and the edges are fraying. Also, we're having the foyer painted kilim beige by Sherwin Williams on Saturday. Same color above and below the chair rail. Hope that's going to work out!

We lived for 5 years with the formal living room as the playroom, so I feel your pain...then we moved to a house with an out of the way bonus room, which was great...but kids were older, didn't need as much supervision, and we lived in SoCal, so energy could always be released outside.
I know we all grew up making do with less, but back in the day our parents could boot us outside, and we played with twigs and sticks and berries!
Our philosophy with kid friendly spaces was to furnish for real people, but not with anything that would represent a financial loss if kids were kids. Used furniture from back in the day when furniture was made from real wood can be a good strategy. New upholstery, though!
I would change out the curtains for some simple blinds, less likely to be used as a towel or swung from, and maybe put a
daybed in front of the window...good viewing spot for the dog!

I think your living room calls for very sleek transitional sofa/sectional style. Here is a few examples.

Here is a few more ideas. You can go for a sectional with a bumper chaise if you do not want to block the windows.

Apple green will brighten up the room if you do not go all monochromatic.We specialize in designer style custom sofas and sectionals like you see in the show rooms of Crate & Barrel, Restoration Hardware, Pottery Barn, Room and Board, Ralph Lauren, Jonathan Adler, Mitchell Gold & Bob Williams, Bassett, Z Gallery, Hickory, Gus Modern, Williams Sonoma, Lee Industries, B&B Italia, and many other American and European furniture designers.

Manufacturer Direct Savings!

www.yourspacefurniture.com

Your Space Furniture -- the poster has presented this room as a Kids Playroom, so all your suggestions are off base, just generic sales stuff. It gets annoying.

The poster presented it as Kid friendly room, not kid playroom! In my understanding, kid friendly room is a room where kids cant mess up the furniture e.g. sofa cushions.

I am so sorry my posts annoy you. That is probably because i addressed your dislike of sectionals in the other discussions. :) sorry. It is a free country --we are free to speak out our opinions ideas and suggestions.

Well, I don't think a sectional is going to meet our needs in any case.

My youngest, who is 7 said last night while we were talking about the room that maybe it should be less of a playroom and more like a 'normal' room now that she and her brother are older. :)

I'm going to spend some time this weekend organizing the kids' closets and see if there are things I can purge there.

If this was going to be 'normal' living room, and given that window wall, what kind of furniture arrangement do you think would work? I'm thinking maybe I should try to sort of plan ahead so that when we do change it I'm as prepared as I can be. Or maybe I can do some kind of hybrid now.

Good thinking. I will revisit your layout and see what we can do. Brilliant children! Tell them i am very impressed! ;-)

If your kids are ready to act more like grown-ups in the best, you'd best be all over that! Now is a great time to redirect their play to the fireside room.

Start your purge with their toys and be honest with yourself. If they don't use it for its intended purpose, gonzo. Stuffies make fantastic ammunition, but that doesn't mean we need to keep 700 of them just so the room can get trashed! Nerf guns can be relegated to the bedrooms, to be taken out only during war. I would suggest leaving a bunch of books on shelves or in a basket. That will reinforce the grown-up space idea and aid the transition.

It's inevitable that they will get up to their old shenanigans. Just keep reminding them, "nope, this is where we act like grown-ups." Trust me, I understand this battle. It's worth it though.

It's great for children to be able to horse around without feeling that they're doing something that they shouldn't, and you've done a great job in providing them with a space for that. "A sound mind in a sound body."

If "more like grown ups" means less active play, or being criticized for acting childish, I'd have mixed feelings about that.

Swap your dining room and living room. The dining room always stays neater for presentation purposes and if you have an eat in kitchen it is not used as often.

If currently you don't use the formal dining area that much when you switch it - make it so it is malleable. Create a formal living room dining area combo in this front room space as there is plenty of room to do so. By making a dynamic environment in a confined room you can instantly alter it's purpose based on what is required or desired at any given time.

This then gives you a gathering room off the kitchen where you can cook and keep an eye on them at the same time. Face it - you have kids and they need space to be kids. Tailor the room for their needs just short of rubber walls :) They won't be little forever and this time to explore their creativity is so very important. Puzzles, crafts and music a place for them to have friends over and not be under the adults feet. With the way you described your home this could also be an instant guest room for a visiting relative. (Did I neglect to mention a quiet place for homework?)

In a few years you can reorder things.

I have played around with several different layouts for your room, with a more "adult" usage in mind. The best two are next.

This puts a sofa in front of the windows, and you might be able to place a sofa table behind it with a couple of lamps. Two 28x28 swivel chairs, two round ottomans so they are easy to move out of the way for floor space when needed. A small reading chair for the corner with a small round stool to set a cup of coffee, etc. A 48" long console for some storage and perhaps a lamp or two. I am not clear on which entry into this space is from the home entry and which is dining room? Can you give me the overall floor plan?

Rev. 4 has sofa on far wall with two chairs forming "corner" tables and one round ottoman. This has a 9 x 9' rug. One console (storage and decor) with perhaps a couple of lamps. Each Rev. has walking room (approx. 3' of space) through the room. This room is quite challenging because of the window wall, and two entrances, as I'm sure you already know. But these two layouts would work. Depending on which way you see from the entry, would determine which layout I would prefer.

Thanks Flo!!! I'll look at this more closely after work but to answer your question, as I look at the pictures you posted the dining room is beyond the opening on the right and the foyer is off the opening on the bottom (window wall side).

OK, then I would probably prefer Rev. 4, because as you enter the space you would see great artwork over the back of the sofa, which would make a nice "view". It would also work with "line of sight" from the dining room. If you got chairs on the large ball casters and the ottoman was sized right, each of those could be moved out to provide a bit more "floor space" from time to time. Enjoy. Take a closer look when you are able.

I just googled and found out you can add casters to any chair. Yay!! Maybe I can have 2 chairs that look nice but also double as goals for knee hockey. :)

Yes you can add casters, however, that raises chair anywhere from 2"-4" and that affects seat height, so not as easy as it sounds. Usually, chairs on casters have a lower seat profile to accommodate this issue. You can always try it.

We spent hours in Crate and Barrel and RH this weekend. We talked about maybe doing the sofa and one chair with a round ottoman and then maybe cutting down to 2 of those bookcases and using the card table and chairs for Legos and things. That way it can be totally put away when the need arises. But we will have the one side o the room that looks presentable and is what you see from both the front door and the dining room. You can't really see that other corner until you're inside the room.

We bought a rug and 2 chairs. Can I get your opinion on nesting tables? I'm thinking they're practical because they can go from being a presentable end table to being 2 or 3 Lego tables. When the chairs get here, which I think is Friday, I'll post pics of them in the room but in the meantime, any thoughts on what material/color might work with the rich solid blue rug and neutral patterned chairs?

Also, the kids want a soft ottoman in there and I was thinking of a rectangular one that's flat on the top as opposed to tufted, because I think that would make a better platform for games and toys. Any ideas about color/fabric, considering the rug and chairs? We still have that off white couch in the room. We aren't sure if we're going to replace that now or just leave it for a while and maybe just buy some new throw pillows.

Thanks!

I think of that colour blue as a neutral. We have one that is that denim colour and literally everything looks good with it. I think we are all so used to seeing that colour in our society, our eyes just don't register it anymore. Which is a good thing for a rug!

Definitely go untufted for your ottoman, if my experience counts. Easier for play as you noted and another bonus: crumbs and dirt wiggle their way into those tufts and only a vacuum will get them out.

Two Ikea Trofast units back to back with an MDF table top (most of the big name hardware stores will cut a sheet for you for free). Great for containing all the Legos then just add some storage cubes for ottomans.

We have great decorative pillows with various animal prints that we feel would be great for this type of living room! Check it out on our Live Good page

I personally love Land of Nod for kid room's decor. They have some great playroom rugs that are fun but also not too silly or goofy:

http://www.landofnod.com/playroom/kids-rugs/1

Since it’s always fun to see how the room ends up, here’s where it is today. Not super kid friendly but they still have a ton of toys in those Ikea bins.

Oh no. I don't see anything. Did you demolish the room? Did I go blind?

Thx. Guess you changed goals. My only suggestion is the rug doesn’t seem to go with the other elements. A lighter blue/gray might be better if you change that up.

I couldn't post photos from my phone so had to use the computer, hence the delay. Flo, funny you say that. We have a very pretty light blue rug sitting in the basement right now. We got a puppy last year and so I bought this cheap rug to use while she was house training. She's great now and your comment has motivated me to bring the nice rug back up!

Great. Congrats on your room and new family addition. We need pics of puppy too!

This is her now

Beautiful dogs! That’s a house full!!

Lots to read through, but don't forget to secure the storage units to the wall!

The room looks great and so do the dogs. The pup looks exactly like the eight chocolate labs my friend Wendy had about a year ago.

EIGHT!?!?! Only the chocolate one is ours. The black one is her friend. :)

Since the IKEA bookcases are staying put, let's use them as a jumping-off point. Consider the vibe you want for the rug - cozy, easy-clean, or a pop of color? Furniture can be anything from a movie-night sectional to a comfy reading chair. Ottomans with storage are a secret weapon for hiding toys and keeping things tidy.

kid friendly living room ideas: Lower the coffee table height to avoid bumps, opt for rounded furniture edges, and choose washable fabrics for ultimate spill defense! Feel free to share pics (without the artwork) for even more personalized suggestions. Good luck and happy decorating!

7 year old post. The “kids” are probably teenagers by now.