We had the same layout as phuninthesun is showing, but we used two couches across from each other. That gave us space to sprawl out and watch tv in the evening. My daughter has a couch with a big ottoman sitting in front of her fireplace and it looks fine. It looks like a sofa with a chaise on the end.

Can you see that a chaise is a problem in the layout from the image below? You can place the chaise in front of the fireplace.

Select a sofa with a concealed recliner instead of the chaise.

Use a free floor planning app where you can draw the floor plan and play with various furniture arrangements. I recommend www.planningwiz.com :). With the free edition you can create, design, preview and save 5 floor plans for free. Hope it helps!

I like both your arrangements. I think you could go either way. I would tend to lean towards the setup with the sectional. We have a big sectional and I love it. My kids fight over who is going to sit in the corner! Lol

Try Live Home 3D, great app for experimenting with floor plan layouts, furniture arrangements and helps visualize home in 3D. If you are on Win or iOS, you can enjoy Free version. If you are a Mac user, trial version will likely be useful as well.

We don't think the proposed set up in your last image would work well. It would be better to have the sofa facing two chairs and then get a coffee table that you can have ottomans underneath to pull out.