Making great rooms for those who love fiction

Now, before you have to start wiping the drool from your face, there is always a chance you can make your current house look somewhat like what you see here. The room might be smaller, the tv too and the shelf space not quite so much as adding shelving everywhere is like doubling the thickness of the walls. Still, you can make a rather comfortable, fun and impressive room if you just take a few hints from those below. The idea is, make one for you and not for a showroom.

You could just buy these types of couches. There are single and double sets with cup holders. A tad expensive for chairs but with a little saving you could have a movie viewing chair in front of your television.

These are cheaper chairs but they have a touch of class. Also, wooden or tiled floors would be excellent for boosting the sound quality.

While more than a little over the top, you can see that lighting, colour and design do have a play in things. A coat of paint then either some pictures, stenciled designs or, as with the first image, a bit of wallpaper can really make a room.

The old style touch of class is hard to create but if you have wood furniture about or leather chairs then a nicely patterned carpet and some framed pictures or movie posters could do the trick. Also, if you lack wood paneling on your walls then any of the beige to timber coloured to chocolate coloured paints might work, depending on your furniture.

The round room can be created anywhere by circling your seating around a table and centring the television. You don't really need all the seating to be connected. Just matching styles, colours or coloured cushions would do. And that doesn't mean they all have to be the same. Match by lines and complimentary colours and it will look pretty impressive. In the end, all you might need to do is rearrange some furniture and buy some cushions.

You can make the television even more of a feature by centring it between two other features. It could be shelves or candles or framed posters or healthy green pot plants in flashy pots. The effect on a room is rather immediate, especially if the room is fairly uncluttered.

This one seems quite close to the hubby's dream and is about the least obtainable for any house. Most houses don't have a spare room that could be set up for television and movie watching alone. Most rooms are combo rooms for general entertainment, dinning as well as book and/or DVD collections. So to make this room, you need to be fairly well off money-wise or space-wise. And if you are, then a lick of paint, a few upward facing spotlights, a curtain, some chairs and a wood floor and you're set. Oh, and the television.

Creating a library room takes a bit more work than a television or movie room. But if you splurge on solid wood shelving all of the same type of wood you can make an impressive room without having to re-pannel your walls and check for load bearing beams and struts to attach shelving to. Wooden ladders are a little hard to find nowadays but you could make your own (watch out that you check joints and weight loads) or search about in antique type stores for an oldie but a goodie.

Like television or movie rooms it also comes down to seating and lighting as the pleasure in an entertainment room is less in it being in a particular state and more sitting in it doing what you like best. If the room is large then an intricate carpet can fill the space and make it warm.

If there's a feature in the house like a nice stairwell or an area with a high roof then work to highlight it and make it part of the library look.

The room doesn't have to be big, just choose furniture to fit the room and maybe spread your collection over several rooms. A few in the bedroom, a few in the reading or sun room and a few in the general entertainment area. Also, you can play with the style and colouring so that it matches that of your collection. A collection of hardbacks suits a more form room than a collection of paperbacks, which would work well in a sun room or bedroom.

I believe the main problem for fiction lovers is finding a place for both a sound system and a large collection of books or comics. The reason for this is sound is dulled by book collections and carpeting while reading is easier when the slow story you're reading doesn't clash with a fast paced one on a television that's being blasted at you. The best solution I've seen for maintaining sound quality is the below glass divider. But the issue of reading in such a room while the television is on still remains.

Note: I have yet to find a truly classy comics room within a house, although there are some neat and practical ones out there. The best ones would probably be modelled of shop designs like these.