The biggest problem with the living room furniture is usually the fact there is so much furniture to arrange. Although there are gen­erally more pieces of furniture to accom­modate in a living room than in any other room in your house, the actual design of this room is completed with the choice of wall color and/or coverings, dados and crown moldings, lighting, window treat­ment, and floor coverings before furniture is even added. How these elements are se­lected will depend on the style you want for your living room, but how they will be arranged is a matter of your particular cir­cumstances. Those particular circumstan­ces are what keep people forever moving the living room furniture around in the first place.

Aside from the long piece that one can lie down on full length, or two long pieces if such are your needs, you must accom­modate all those occasional chairs - that is, chairs used on occasion, such as when company comes. Whether they are pull-up chairs, hassocks, ottomans, camel seats, benches, buggy seats, old fold-down thea­ter seats (used individually or in pairs) or nicely upholstered traditional pull-up chairs, there is little I haven't seen or that can't be used in combination with other chairs in a living room, provided there is an overall plan. There are so many differ­ent kinds of occasional chairs that there's no reason to be limited to the matching pair on either end of the sofa. Try mixing shapes and you'll find it's easier to make all those many living room essentials work with each other.

Another important essential is the cof­fee table. I would avoid the "little noth­ing" approach, where people have to get up out of their chairs or stretch uncom­fortably far to reach a too-small table. A coffee table should be big enough to hold not only cups and saucers and sugar and cream, but ashtrays, drinks, food, reading material, flowers, candles, and sweets in a dish. Consider a coffee table five feet long and about twenty-four to thirty inches wide. A round coffee table should be about thirty inches in diameter, and the top should be slightly lower than the seat of the sofa.

Modern glass-topped coffee table, typi­cally with a stainless steel or bronze base, is the most versatile because it can be used with virtually every style of home furnish­ings, whether French, Spanish, Oriental, country, or even wicker. If a coffee table is on your list of essentials to purchase, you might consider this now classic style. The coffee table is never enough surface in a living room to accommodate a group. End tables are essential; ideally no chair should sit alone without one. The match­ing end tables at either side of the sofa are no longer so popular. If you like them that way, choose round or curved shapes to break die long line that can give a railroad effect to the sofa-flanked-by-matching-end-tables. Whether they are the same or different, make sure your end tables are not too much higher or lower than the arms of your sofa.