The living room wall everyone sees first

In most of the homes we work on, the living room is also the room where guests sit, children do homework, and the television stays on through the evening. The wall behind the screen has to hold all of that without looking like a shop display.

One wall, three jobs

A TV unit is storage, a place for the set, and the backdrop of the room. We decide the height of the screen from the sofa, not from the ceiling. Below it, closed storage takes remotes, routers, and the objects that do not need to be on show. Open shelves are kept few, and only for things the family is happy to dust.

Where the living room shares a wall with a bedroom or a passage, we sometimes continue the same joinery so the TV unit, a wardrobe, or a shoe rack read as one piece. The room feels larger when the lines do not stop and start at every doorway.

What we keep off the wall

• Too many open niches. They fill up, and then the wall looks unfinished.
• A backlight that glares on the screen. Cove light belongs above or beside the set, not in the viewer’s eyes.
• A unit so deep that it steals the walking space in front of the sofa.

Cable routes are planned before the carpenter closes the carcass. A clean wall is mostly a question of where the power point and the set-top box were allowed to sit. Once that is settled, the finish can stay simple: a laminate or veneer that matches the flooring, and a stone or fluted detail only if the room still has somewhere quiet to rest the eye.