What are the room's dimensions, please?

What "functions" are you trying to achieve with a redesigned space? I see possibilities for an entryway bench, bookshelf, or a desk, but I'm just not clear on what you want to achieve.

I'd put a great table or maybe even a dresser in the entryway. Make it storage, keys, umbrellas, gloves, sunglasses, all that grab it on the way out stuff. Terrific mirror over it to make it seem larger and touch up as you go.

I'd pair down to one sofa centered under the window with floor lamps over head. Get tiny occasional tables to set drinks or an ottoman for a tray of snacks. No coffee table since it's essentailly a pass thru. Opposite sofa, two chairs, not too big with a table in between. Mount the smallest tv you can live with on the wall pretty much where it is so it can be seen from the kitchen.

Or put a desk opposite the sofa with a really nice upholstered chair for comfort and looks.

I think you have some great comments here already. I personally think that you put the love seat where the chair is, at a 90 degree angle to the couch - facing the kitchen, and move the television to centered with the couch.

Then you can get a console table for behind the love seat, so that you can put a bowl for your keys, even a lamp there & use it as extra storage.

Then move the chair into the entry nook, with a small table & bookshelf. It can work as a reading nook, or a place for people to sit and put their shoes/boots on.

I would position a sofa off the wall and parallel to the breakfast bar. Put a sofa table behind it to create an entry space with a bench, coat rack etc. Take the t.v. and put it on the long wall at the top of the layout pic. on top of a low bookshelf or dresser. For the space between the breakfast bar and the couch, a couple of chairs or something low profile like a chaise lounge.

I see the space as a dining/living area. For a visual...the cover of the current issue of martha stewart living is how i'm picturing the space. A dining room you can live in.

Starting with the entry, I would put an armoir opposite the front door. great for storage and helping to designate the space as a foyer/entry. A small "catch-all" side table would go next to the door.
Heading into the living/dining area, I would put an upholstered banquette sectional where the large sofa was. A sectional would help define the entry as a separate space. In front of the sectional would go a round table with comfortable dining style chairs.

Opposite the banquette, I'd put bookshelves or a media center for the television, also giving you more storage. Two small or one medium sized club chairs would go in front of that.

i would definitely center a sofa under the window; then place 2 comfortable accent chairs either: on the right of the sofa with a small bench or pair of ottomans opposite or one chair on either side of the sofa-hard to say depending on the size of room and furniture you choose. then i would use 2 small square tables and the tv on the wall opposite. finally, a great bench or dresser with a mirror in the entry.

Great suggestions already - but have you considered putting in a closet so you can hang coats, etc? For me, I'm always looking for more space for books, and I'd be tempted to add bookcases!

Right now, you have the furniture arranged as though the most important function of this area is it serving as a hallway. You have created a large space for traffic traffic to pass right in the middle of furniture pieces that are supposed to be a conversational grouping. It is OK to force yourself to stop and treat it as a room. Obviously, you need to have enough clearance to move through the room, but if you place the furniture in a way that forces the path of travel to change, you will create a sense of separate space. I agree with the recommendations to place your sofa or love seat to partition the living space away from the entry space. If you make the entry space functional, you won't feel a need to rush through the living room to put your things away.

Specifically, I think you should place the love seat at a 90º angle to the couch, with its back to the door. The club chair could go to the left side, at an angle facing the sofa & love seat. I think this would work better if you had a slightly smaller coffee table, so you could fit the club chair mostly on the rug. You could get a lot of use out of a slim credenza or other storage piece to hold the TV across from the sofa, and another one in the the entry area.

Another way you could do it would be to put the sofa on the wall opposite its current location, with the love seat at a right angle to it, separating off the entry area. The TV would go opposite the sofa, next to the window (no glare!), and the club chair would complete the grouping. The entry area would really feel like a room then, and it could accomodate a larger piece of furniture, such as a desk. The traffic pattern would take an immediate left from the door, then a 90º turn at the bar.

I should also mention that one of the things about the second layout that is nice is that it reuses the area that you have to keep open anyway to be able to sit at the bar. That means that some of the space you were reserving for circulation can now be used for furniture.

We have a long living room as well, with two large spaces on either end of the naturally centered seating area. What do do with them? Rather than force the room into one massive space, we've created three zones within the room. It looks like yours is sized perfectly for three zones, too: the bar for dining, the sofa area for lounging, and the entry way for landing strip/workspace/storage.

If a space is functionally well-designed, it will get used, and it seems that your entry way just isn't set up to be functional.

FQuestion for you is: do you need a workspace and storage? If you do, I'd include a waist-high work console opposite your front door. By incorporating a slightly narrower console-height surface, the space won't be a visual dead weight, and it would be functional while standing. You could include a stool so that it can be used seated, but the seating footprint stays small. Further, a console is narrower, so you're not crowding the front door. This is also a natural way to keep third seat to use at your bar. I'd add open shelves for storage / display on the wall behind the door.

In our house, our middle area is "L" shaped, and traffic flows around, rather than through the room. I suggest rotating your loveseat with it's back to the kitchen, and then pulling the sofa away from the wall so that traffic goes behind it, rather than in front. Also consider trading in your rectangle coffee table for a round one. The round shape will help break up all the long, bowling-alley lines in the room. The flow becomes circular, rather than linear.

Next: trade in your TV for a flat screen that can be mounted on the wall, and put the arm chair where the TV is now. There are fabulous articulating arms that allow you to pull the screen out for viewing and push it back when you're lounging.

Have fun!

PS Also consider trading the love seat in for two chairs, or trading the sofa/love seat in for a low-profile sectional.

Why not make this an entry/breakfast room - and make another room in the house the living room?

I'm not sure about how to improve the "living room" section, but I have some suggestions for the entryway area.

I think putting a long, slim console table or shallow buffet (if you need extra storage) would be the best use of that wall opposite the front door.

Also, it would be nice to walk into your house and see something that makes you happy, so if you're into art or family photos, you might want to put a little collection on the wall above the console/buffet.

You can probably fit a bench or two side chairs "behind" the door, under the window, to help with shoes on/off when leaving or entering the house.

It also looks like you can fit a bookcase to the left of the door.

Thanks for all of the great suggestions! On questions related to size:

Entryway: (Starting with north wall) 7'6", 9'5", 9'5"

Living area: (Starting with north wall) 13'2", 1'10", (now down to south extension) 2'5", ~10', 2'

I also have long narrow living area, divided into 3 areas, with the living area in the middle.

Ignore those people who are telling you to put the couch on a 90 degree angle to where it is now. Your opening into the room (if your floor plan is at all accurate) isn't wide enough to do so without making the opening seem too cramped. I have experimented with this myself, and it just doesn't work, it wrecks the flow of the room. The key to making 3 spaces like this work is to make them separate, but with easy traffic flow between them. So also skip putting the loveseat on a 90 degree angle to the couch, for the same reason. Even if your entryway was wider, I'd never place my living room couch facing into the kitchen - that is never the view I want from my living room couch.

If I were going to turn the couch, I'd turn it to face the entryway, where it would face the view out the windows, which you could do, leaving enough room behind it to access the bar. But I wouldn't recommend doing that here (unless you try it and love it that way), as that essentially turns the living and entry areas into one space (though maybe you'd like that, one big living area, as you don't seem to need to use your entryway for storage as most of us do.)

I think the living area works well where it is. I essentially have the couch like you do (only instead of your kitchen to the left, I have my dining table.) I love my pass through living room - it feels so much bigger with open spaces on either side of it - it feels loft-like. So ignore the person who says the living room is like a hallway - I'm sure it doesn't feel that way to you when you are in it.

The proper place for your couch is on the wall it is on. Not on the wall across from it where the loveseat is now, and this is why. You need that coffee table because it is where you eat, sitting on the couch - am I right? - or at least where you snack. And you may be someone who likes to put your feet up on it sometimes. If it were in front of the couch on the other side of the room, it would be in the way for traffic flow into the kitchen.

I find the couch a little odd smashed into the corner though. You obviously put it there to leave room for the breakfast bar stools. Do you ever eat at the the breakfast bar? I ask because many don't. I personally can't stand eating at them. If I had one, I'd dispense with stools and have bookcases built-in below it. If you don't use it, center the couch and use two end tables on each side with lamps on them.

The oddness of your living area is that the loveseat doesn't work there. That's why you never sit on it. It is a bit too far away from the couch to make it part of the seating area with the couch. So I'd get the loveseat out of the room. I'd put a small eating table and chairs where the loveseat is, as I like to eat at a table sometimes. Is that a dining table you have stashed in your entry area? It looks like it from the shape. Try it over here, against the wall, and see how you like it. You may never eat at your breakfast bar again.

If you don't want a table there, I'd do a large unit of shelves on that wall, incorporating a flat screen TV into it as whatever your preferred viewing height is. I'd put books and art objects on the shelves. But maybe you don't have use for them. Only you can figure out what you want to DO in a room, and thus what functional furniture you need in a room (like deciding where and how you like to eat), and what items you collect and thus need to store. (I have a buffet and a bookcase and a stereo cabinet on the wall across from my couch, but I don't have a TV in this room.) If you don't need storage in your living room, put the TV on a low console across from the couch and put art on that wall. If you like a table there, put the tv on or in a corner cabinet where it is now, and put it on a shelf that pulls out and allows you to angle it for best viewing.

The chair angled toward the loveseat could face directly toward the kitchen, and you could put a small console behind it if you wanted. If you don't like this chair here, consider getting it out of this room altogether and going with a smaller profile chair (I have an antique wood rocker that can be moved around eaily on the other side of my coffee table.)

Thinking you won't have enough seating for company? When I have a crowd (up to 12 so far), I pull up extra dining chairs (you will have 3 right nearby if you place the dining table on that wall) and we eat dinner sitting all around the coffee table. Dining table acts a buffet for filling up your plate. Of, if you have a table with leaves, you may be able to seat a number at your table. Helpful if your tv table is on casters and can be pushed away as needed.

I'm assuming you watch TV a lot here. If you don't, or don't watch it a lot, you could make a dining area along that wall with a long narrow table instead. A long settle could be the seating on the wall side. Or if the room is not wide enough to easily walk through with this, push the table against the wall. Or just have a wood bench on the wall side when extra seating at the table is needed.

Consider if you watch TV mostly in another room. Then you could dispense with it here, and have room for a nice long dining table here. Or if TV watching is not the main function of this room, put a TV in a cabinet that you could open and pull out the TV and angle for viewing, either in the corner where it is, or just beyond that in the entryway.

Now, as to your entryway, decide what (if any) your storage needs are. You've got lots of good ideas here, from an armoire or wall hooks opposite the door if you need to hang coats, to a dresser with drawers if you need drawer storage, with a mirror above if you like that, to a bench for putting on shoes. Try your loveseat and or chair across from the door, though I'm thinking they will be too bulky, and you'll need a slimmer profile seating piece there.

The one thing your entry is crying out for is a big plant, like a tree, in front of that window, just past where the door swings so the door can swing open withoug hitting it. Do not place a sitting bench behind the door. You don't want anything behind the door, except maybe plants on a bench or stool. That way, if the door opens too far, it hits the bench, not the plants. If you want a bench seat for putting on shoes, put it across from the door- that way you won't be sitting behind the door when it opens.

If you need no shoe, coat or other storage here, and just need to furnish it too look nice as an extension of your living room, just place a small console table, dresser, or desk across from the door, and put art or a mirror above it, and you're done. If there's room next to whatever you put there, place a chair in the corner next to it (maybe a fourth dining chair if you go with one of my dining area suggestions above.) You could also use a small furniture item just to the left of the door where you come in.

This looks exactly like the past home of my close friend and her house looked great! For the entryway, you could put a credenza or dresser on the wall opposite the entry with a nicely framed mirror or nice piece of art above it. I'd go with a larger piece of art or a cluster of smaller pieces.

For my friend's living area, she had a bunch of cube shelving to the ceiling storing books and a big comfy chair with ottoman creating a cozy and attractive reading area where your love seat resides. Then a seating area as you do (with one more chair). But she had a separate tv room so no tv.

I like the idea of a dining area there as well if you can watch tv in another room.

You could try something similar to cogg's suggestion. Use a sofa with a table behind it to define the seating space from the foyer area. Lots of good ideas here for a foyer -- mirrors, pictures, etc. That will open up the little "nook" where the couch is now for a different little vignette -- a small breakfast area, desk, game table or a couple of chairs with a table between -- still close enough to sofa for conversation (and TV can be viewed, too).

I second the reader who asked you what you want to use the space for. We Americans have an illness called the TV that we spend all our time catering to - we plan meals, schedules, and even floor plans around it. If you didn't have a TV, what would you do differently?

Also, I noticed that right now you have to walk through the middle of your seating circle to get to the rest of the house. Traffic flow should always go around conversation circles, not through them. Don't feel like you have to glue your sofas to the wall. And for heaven's sake, make sure you don't have too much furniture for the space. You are saying that most of your furniture isn't getting used. If most of it isn't getting used, get rid of what you don't use - it will give you plenty of space to rearrange the pieces you actually do use. Good luck!