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Fact is that the average American watches five hours TV per day.
Not sure where you get this statistic. We limit our kids screen time to 1 hour per day and 3 hours per weekend day (usually, there are exceptions). The use most of that playing games or surfing the internet. That does not include watching a movie or tv show with us at bedtime. Most of our friends have similar restrictions. However I suppose if you have nine people who watch one hour a day, and one person who watched 20 hours a day, you could come up with an average close to 5 hours per person.
Probably most people never use their fireplace. Fireplaces are not even an efficient way to heat a house.
I know no one who never uses their fireplace. Some people use them rarely. Some people use them a lot. Where we live oyu can smell woodsmoke 24/7 during the winter. Someone is always using one. We use ours a lot. Define efficient? Our fireplaces heat out house for free. Seems pretty efficient to me.
I think its better to accept who you are and just build your house around that lifestyle then to cater to a lifestyle you imagine but don't practice.
We frequently sit near a fireplace and read, or mess with a computer, or sleep, pet a dog or cat etc. It is one of the positive things about winter. TVs are ugly no make that UGLY. We have one in one parlor. It is hidden inside a pretty antique armoire. We try to keep the doors to the armoire closed. The other parlor does not have one. There is a big ugly (UGLY) projection TV in the game room in the basement and one in our bedroom. The one in our bedroom gets the most use. We often watch a movie with the kids before going to bed.
When I am in the house I use the TV a lot. And even if I did want to sit around and read or have a conversation with my wife, a TV on the wall would not stop me. I have not used a fireplace in over ten years. And certainly don't feel its necessary to have a conversation or read a book.
A TV on the wall woudl not stop you, but it is UGLY and it may distract you. In our relationship, we find that it IS necessary to have conversations. reading a book is not often necessary, but neither is watching TV. Reading a book is more entertaining because the TV cannot show you anything near what your imagination can and books do not have commercials. Plus with a book you control when you start and stop, you can take breaks and not miss anything and you stop and have a conversation without missing anything. Plus books do not wake anyone else up or keep them awake.
Here in the city of Chicago we have much smaller spaces. I often see condos with no suitable place to put a large TV at all. When I look at many real estate listings there is no TV anywhere in the house because their is not a suitable spot to put one.
You really do not need a large TV. That is just compensation. With a large TV you sit further away, with a small tv you sit closer. Otherwise there really is not difference. If you frequently have more than four people watching tv at once it may be impractical to sit closer so then you would need a large TV. IT cracks me up when people put a huge 72" TV in a small living room. It certainly expresses their life priority well. But why do they get such a big TV? Bigger does not make it better. In fact if it is too big and the room too small it is difficult to sit far enough away to view it properly.
When I look at real estate listings first thing I do is figure out how I can place a sofa and a chair or two and a 50 inch TV. And I want that TV room to be my main living room and really want it off the kitchen. Here in the city you are really unlikely to have more than one living room anyways, but if it were some suburban house with multiple spaces I insist that it be the main living space. If I can't make those basics work then the house is out.
Wow. I woudl never want a 50 inch tv in my livingroom unless it was well hidden. While a small TV is ugly, a giant one is big ugly. You have to have a good sized room to get far enough away from that to view it comfortably. I will stick with a small TV and spend the extra money on a trampoline, or a bicycle, or a canoe. . . . maybe a horse. For several years we simply evicted the TVs from ourhouse and had none. Those were great years. We played games a lot, read, did more outside, had little parties, made up songs and stories, kids did puppet shows, we listened to music and danced a lot, sometimes we even just watched the fish in the aquarium and made up stories about them. I woudl go back to that again in an instant, however iI am not sure the fmaily would agree to it, especially the no Xbox problem.
Am I obsessed with TV? No, not at all. I probably watch significantly less than the average american and don't even have cable. Yet I realize there is no chance I am not having a TV, so I am going to have to put it somewhere and would prefer it not to look goofy. And I realize that since I am only spending 5 or 6 free hours in the house, a good portion of that is in front of the TV and I want my house to make that work.
Kind of sounds like it from my perspective, but that is a matter of subjective evaluation. Try getting rid of your TV for a month or two. Just put it in storage. If you hate it, after a month or two, bring it back out, but set a reasonably long time to try it so you do not pull it out while you are still in withdrawal. Commit to at least four weeks and stick to it no matter what. Best way to have it not look goofy is to hide it. A friend of mine builds custom cabinets with an electric lift that brings the TV up from the base of the cabinet when you want to watch it and it sinks down when not in use. That is pretty neat but pricey.
But the end result that I often see is that the TV is mounted in a way that does not fit into the room at all and ends up looking dumb.
TV are ugly. unless you hide them, there is not way to include them so the do not look dumb. Maybe you could build the TV into a wall and hide it behind a painting or a scrim.
This is because builder and buyer failed to incorporate a TV spot into the floorplan. Or there is a second room and the family spends the majority of the time there, ignoring the much more costly and prominent primary living space. Both of those end results seem dumb to me. I would much rather build a room around sofa and TV and then see if I can fit in a fireplace.
Our rooms center around the fireplaces. The various couches and chairs are set up for conversation and mostly orient on the fireplace (except a tete-a-tete in one which places two people oriented on each other while facing in opposite directions). The TV in the one parlor is off to the side. The other parlor just has two couches some chairs and the Tet e-a-tete. Most people in our family lie on the floor when watching TV anyway. We mostly use the furniture when reading or socializing. The Front parlor is kept nice and clean for entertaining. There is not TV (not useful when entertaining). Sometimes the kids use that parlor for practicing music, or reading. Otherwise we mostly keep it untouched and always have a neat clean room to bring guests into when they show up (or we invite them). No dashing around cleaning and stacking newspapers books, magazines, picking up Xbox games and parts, and the like. Actually right now the back parlor has a erg in the of the room. The erg faces the tv so people can watch tv while working out. That is a good use for TV, distracts focus from pain and it is impossible to read a book or have conversation while erging.
To me the ideal is to have one room set up for entertaining (no TV) and the other room highly adaptable to accommodate different uses and configurations as your life changes. At times you need room for a playpen and other times you may need room for a wheel chair to get around. I would hate having a room designed for one specific configuration. I like to move the furniture around, sometimes for a reason, sometimes just for a change.
I don't know and I don't care what they do with "new houses." I'd never live in one again.
I love my old home, oak mantled fire place, hard wood floors and solid construction.
Television the center of the home? Only if it's the center of your life. It's not the center of mine. I also HATE the stupid look of a flat screen TV mounted above a fireplace.
We even use our fireplace on chilly summer nights, in the Spring, and Fall and constantly in the Winter.
I think you have a misconception of how Americans use their houses. The living room is expected to be a formal space and used to entertain guests or parties. In a house big enough to have a fireplace there is likely another less formal room often in the basement called the family room where the family tends to gather. The kitchen may have no TV or it may have a small TV of it's own or a radio for entertainment while working…kind of hard to look at TV and cook esp. a TV that may be some distance away from the kitchen and what if the men want to watch sports and the wife something else while cooking?
Condos are another ball of wax because they are basically small to begin with and so a fireplace in a condo is kind of odd and likely appeals to a certain crowd. Fireplaces are for entertaining and looks not heat. The TV is not viewed as something one should show off in an living room. In a Family room, man cave, or other part of the house maybe not the living room. An living room without a TV isn't something odd or if there is one it may be smaller than the TV in the family room.
Having two spaces can be really handy for entertainment. For instance on Thanksgiving the men may want to watch sports and the ladies can keep chatting in the living room. On Chrsitmas the children can be sent to the family room to play with toys while the adults stay in the living room. When friends and guests come over you can chat in the living room and leave the teenager in the basement family room playing video games(instead of kicking him off the TV becuase of the guest). Oh another reason for the second room for the family is to keep the living room furniture looking nice. Less wear and tear on it plus when you redocrate you often take the old living room sofa and throw it into this space.
More like: demand and supply. If people keep asking for them, I'll keep building them. Where doesn't really matter to me- as long as the money is green!
(the other perspective)
Don't you mostly build custom homes where people have more than one room in which to enjoy a fire or watch TV? I can definitely see a large number of people in the higher income brackets wanting a fireplace. It's like a wine fridge or the Sub-Zero. Rarely is it needed on a daily basis but if one is entertaining it's certainly going to be a boon. And on a day-to-day basis, the family can gather in a den room and watch television or the kids can play while the adults watch TV.
Many tract homes, however, are being purchased by people who can't afford that much square footage, so in my area at least, the "great room" open to the kitchen (what the OP seems to want) is a compromise. In Southern Arizona, where I live, the tract home contractors make the fireplace, the spa tub and the swimming pool options that up the price (of course, they're always in the model, LOL). Not too many new homes in that price range being built today, though, so buyers are stuck with what someone else chose 5-10 years ago.
I just want to know how on earth people find time to watch 5 hours (or more) of TV per day!
I usually don't get home from work until 7, then I have to make dinner/do the dishes, prep my lunch for the next day, maybe a bit of housework or laundry or 20 minutes on the treadmill. If I tried to watch 5 hours of TV, I'd be up until 1 or 2 AM every night!
Also.. a good reason to NOT design homes around the TV is that technology changes pretty rapidly. I remember built-ins that would hold your TV, VCR, etc were popular in the 80s and 90s. Bet those are pretty useless now, they were designed for now-obsolete equipment. Who knows what the typical TV will be like in another few years?
Don't you mostly build custom homes where people have more than one room in which to enjoy a fire or watch TV?
Yes.
And since you brought up "multiple rooms" that reminded me of something. The houses I built all had "whole house network systems". Which pretty much means you can have a TV, phone, computer, CCTV, etc., literally anywhere.
But; as a whole, I'd say that most of the plans I built are "centered" around the kitchen. They are extra large by most standards, open, can handle multiple cooks at one time, and easily convert to entertaining- it is where everyone congregates during a party!
Oh, and for a little drool- I had one plan that had a "hearth area" connected to the kitchen. It was a through fireplace from the Greatroom. The space could accommodate two love seats (or love seat and two chairs) opposed, and a coffee table.
I always really like those open hearth areas with the through fireplace. My friends recently added that in a renovation and it is was really nice this winter
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