INTERIOR DESIGN -2

Changing Landscape of Living Room Furniture & Home Theater - By: Philip Pendleton

Living room furniture has changed a lot in the last 30 years. Much of that has to do with the many advances in television technology as well as home entertainment. Have you noticed these changes in your own living room or family room? I’ll bet you have. In this article we’re going to take a look at some of the emerging furniture categories that have benefited from the advances in television and home entertainment and how these have changed the landscape of living rooms and family rooms everywhere.

In the early 1980’s society became introduced to affordable entertainment in the form of VCR’s. The VCR was an interesting medium for the television in that it allowed playback of movies and television shows in your own home. The ability to tape programs as it was called allowed individuals to be able to sit down and watch programs at their own leisure in their own furniture whenever they wanted without having to catch a program as it aired. Most families owned a TV and a VCR and these were often able to be placed on simple stands or inside cabinets as most average TVs were anywhere from 27" to 32" in viewing size. Parked in front of the TV was a stationary sofa and perhaps a chair, recliner or a loveseat.

The 1980’s also introduced consumers to home entertainment in the form of video game consoles. Born out of the growing arcade industry which included full size upright cabinets, cocktail tables and sit down games with numerous popular titles the video game industry was booming. Software companies like Atari, Colecovision, Sega and Nintendo came to the forefront with video game consoles that allowed users to plug in different cartridges in which they could play console versions of their favorite arcade games in their own home. The graphics might not have been much like their arcade counterparts but the playability of these games in one’s own home was the appeal and made living rooms and family rooms busy with family members mashing buttons and kicking over end tables and chairs while battling their electronic foes.

Furniture manufacturers at the time missed the mark somewhat in designing furniture for these budding home entertainment centers. Often people would have video game consoles, game cartridges and VCR tapes all over and ended up having to search and find the different media that they wanted to use because there just weren’t any real products on the market that did a great job of organizing and displaying products without compressing them into tiny furniture that was tall and enclosed.

The mid 1990’s Sony and Phillips began waging war with a new medium in home entertainment, the DVD. DVD was a new format that looked like a CD disk but could hold ten times the information. It was around this time that DVD players were introduced with sleek thin profiles that were a match to the many home audio and receiver systems which were beginning to take on more modern designs. The DVD was replacing VHS tapes and big and bulky was heading out to be replaced by thin and efficient designs.

The same can be said about televisions as well. A new market of television were being introduced to consumers who were tired of the boxy designs of 27" and 32" televisions and wanted TV’s that could bring them the look of a home cinema experience. TV’s would soon be able in theater wide models and would be described as projection TV’s. These TV’s would lead to other models like LCD, DLP and plasma models and would continue to market the popularity of theater wide or a 16:9 aspect ration compared to the 4:3 aspect ratio of older television sets. Wider TV’s now meant that cabinets and stands needed to be designed wider as well. This time furniture manufacturers got a second chance at making furniture that kept up with emerging trends in electronics and television as well as the right seating for consumers who were creating their own home theaters.

Furniture would soon be designed wider such as entertainment centers for theater wide television sets. Manufacturers were making the units wider and at the same time dropping the furniture lower to accommodate the larger size of the televisions now being used so that they could keep the furniture eye level with the viewer. DVD players, AV equipment and gaming systems also could fit beneath easier now as the longer width provided better space for all of the equipment. Seating also changed and now reclining furniture as well as super sectionals and motion sofas, loveseats and chairs were introduced to provide a real home theater experience.

So what did your living room look like 30 years ago compared to today? If you walked up to someone in the 1980’s and showed them today’s home theater furniture, seating and equipment you would probably be greeted with any number of responses but any of those would include amazement in how much technology has moved forward both in electronics and furniture. Today’s furniture keeps up with the changing landscape of electronics and the many advances in designs and materials. It’s truly amazing how far we’ve come in what seems to be so little time.