Defining the Living Room’s Style Part 2; Hiding The TV

I’ve spoken about how I was trying to develop a cohesive look for our living room and I shared how I was inspired by American French Country decor.

This part 2 isn’t about aesthetics so much as how best to use the lay out of the room. The room itself is an L shape, and as a result it’s a little “bitty”. A bit here, a bit there. FYI – I’m about to go through why I felt this was important, so feel free to scroll down for the options to hide your tv.

With the huge corner fireplace (still hate it) the part near the dining room has a chunk of its floor space missing along with the dreaded L shape.

The tv outlet is on a wall near to the doorway with a glass cupboard just next to it, making it tricky to use the space well. Particularly as this is the narrowest part of the room.

Furthermore there is a wall with bi-fold doors leading to the dining room and one with a semi circle of windows leading onto the garden.

In addition to all that we got some disappointing news this week. I had someone round to advise me about the fireplace. The only option that worked was the conservatory one and that is estimated at 7-8,000€. More on that later.

Eventually I thought that to make the best of the L shape I should have two separate sections; a tv and reading section. I plan to put a floor to ceiling bookcase in the sunny side of the room as well as comfy sofas. I also plan to divide the room with a sofa – so it will look something like this…

This floor plan is just a sketch; in reality the central sofa will sit back a little so it’s not directly in front of the tv.

However at present the tv cabinet was taking up a good chunk of the connecting area, so to make the sofa divider work I had to wall mount the tv (on the plan you can see the symbol for it just above that central tv. I really didn’t want a big tv on the wall – it’s hardly a part of French Country decor. So I started to look around on the internet for ideas to hide it and these are the solutions I came up with.

1 Behind picture screens

There are lots of different options to do this, and you can find lots of examples on Pinterest for how to do it. I would have loved to do this, but as the outlet for the tv signal is in between the door and window it would have been difficult to fold them back conveniently.

2 Behind a bi-fold painting

I liked this option the best. Notice how they’ve put plug sockets directly behind where the tv will be mounted and inset the whole thing in the wall. Gorgeous!

3 Behind a standing screen

It was whilst I was painting that I suddenly realized that just standing a screen in front of the tv would have the same affect as above without the hassle. Then I realized that with my girls running round it wouldn’t be practical for us. But if you have older children or are generally child free then this could be your perfect solution.