Setting Up Conversation Seating
Task lighting provided by table and floor lamps give just the right illumination for poring over scrapbooks, your cocktail table photo books or other reading material to kick start a conversation. These also help to once again 'enclose' the area on either side of a sofa, defining the conversation area with a beginning and ending point.
Setting Up Conversation Seating
If you have a space that can accommodate an area rug, it can be used to bring definition to the space designated for conversation. Placed beneath the cocktail table or under the entire seating group, the rug states clearly that this is an area designed for a particular activity, in this case conversation. It also helps to bring the larger overall floor down to the right size for speaking while dampening unwanted, distracting noise.
Susan Cozzi Interiors of Boca Raton, Florida created this unique seating group -- perfect for conversation -- on a blue area rug thereby replicating the view of mountains and sky out the windows.
Setting Up Conversation Seating
How pieces are placed in a room also impacts our speech patterns. If upholstery pieces are too far away from one another, people may feel separated. If you want a sense of affinity, the closer the better.
If you think of the space in terms of 'gestalt', the overall geometric shape the pieces take when viewed from above, you can build the area towards intimacy or formality, depending on the shape chosen. A sofa with a loveseat naturally creates a 'square'; a sofa with a chair on either side is rectilinear. In the 'square' one is more communicative, closer in terms of space.
Those seated on either chair in a rectilinear seating group are separated by the distance afforded by the sofa. Associative conversation in such a space often takes place when one individual is seated on a chair, the other seated on the sofa adjacent to the chair.
A 'radial' design to a space, four pieces of upholstery surrounding a central cocktail table (as is often seen in hotel lobbies) is a unique approach to arranging conversation areas in the home. It allots for a sense of closure for a small group, with each conversationalist facing one another.
Think of your seating arrangements as the spokes of a wheel around a central focal point, the 'hub', the cocktail table in this instance. This type of radial design seating area can be seen here as designed by Susan Cozzi.
Setting Up Conversation Seating
People are much more comfortable in 'enclosed' areas. A sense of intimacy in a safe, closeted, environment, frees up conversation; encompass the areas of the living room designated for discussion with objects d' art. Accessories, paintings, rugs, virtually any accent piece that helps to get the conversation rolling will do.
Seen here: Karges Furniture's #4880 Louis XV sofa is surrounded with images sure to tickle any Francophile's fancy.
Setting Up Conversation Seating
The type of 'fill' used in upholstery and its style can impact the feel or direction the conversations take.
Firm cushion cores and straight back pieces tend to induce a sense of formality; you're sitting more 'upright', formal. If you're looking for a bit of pleasant chatter about the news of the day in an atmosphere that relates to keeping a bit of distance between the conversationalists, formal is more your cup of tea time.
Kindel Furniture of Grand Rapids, MI, features this elegant Hepplewhite Sofa (8698) circa 1785-1800 in its Mount Vernon Collection. Reproduced from the parlor of the home, the piece is in mahogany solids with tapered Sheraton style legs and spade foot
Setting Up Conversation Seating
For Starters: Conversations can begin with the right subject matter -- perhaps a unique piece of furniture will fit the bill. A fire-up-the-conversation winner, the Claes Chaise, by Thayer Coggin, designed by Clark Coggin. This chair will give a definite typographic nod to any dot-com discussions.
Setting Up Conversation Seating
Creating a conversation area in a living room is two-fold. First you compose a 'main' conversation area. You then add to the ambiance with a secondary conversation space.
This is achieved with perhaps two chairs angled toward one another in front of a window or on the opposite side of the room, separate and apart from the main group. This 'auxiliary seating' should be moveable to a certain extent which then allows you to bring additional upholstery up to the main conversation space if needed.
Setting Up Conversation Seating
Adding just the right lighting, task and ambient, allows for a space that is relaxing yet stimulating to free and easy talk.
Control of the light in spaces for conversation is important. Ambient lighting, sources of light that create ''pools' of candescence will provide a dreamy aspect to the room, softening the space for intimate chats.
Use 'canister lights' behind sofas or under indoor plants, artwork lighting and perhaps some good old candlelight for just the right nocturnal ambiance with, say, a Beethoven nocturne playing in the background.
Setting Up Conversation Seating
Shelter type upholstery with high arms and back also provide a sense of closeness. As one sits in the space, the walls of the room are brought nearer, sound is deadened, a sense of community created, intimacy heightened. Queen Ann Wing Back Chairs are a famous example of a 'shelter' piece of upholstery.
Seen here, Wing Chair #6416 reproduced from an early Georgian antique found in the Joseph Manigault House (c.1803), Charleston, SC, from the Charleston Collection by Baker Furniture. The traditional 'wing' chair, first designed to keep the warmth of the fire surrounding those seated in the chair, as a side benefit also gives a feeling of security.
Setting Up Conversation Seating
Try a comfy sofa in a special fabric, or maybe two or three, as shown here. Combine with 'down' or 'down blend' cushion fill and the whole ensemble will entice the sitter to lean back; they are 'in' the upholstery more, as opposed to 'on top' of it. This will lend a more casual, let's all be friends here, atmosphere to the seating group.
Setting Up Conversation Seating
Susan Cozzi, ASID