If you look at the floor plans for most homes built today, you’ll generally find a significant amount of space devoted to either a Great Room or a Family Room. All of the plans we offer at our Fox Brook at Montgomery homes allow plenty of space for family rooms.

For a lot of households, however, the Family Room isn’t all that family oriented. What can you do to help your Family Room live up to its name? Sometimes making this room family friendly is challenging because the TV tends to dominate the room—and the whole room is set up so that the television is the focal point. And while watching a movie or sports with your family may be some of what you like to do, it’s probably not all that you want to do together.

One option is to hide the TV away behind cabinet doors or screens when it’s not in use. Another solution is to break up your family room into an area for television viewing and another area for conversation or board games. In order to do that, of course, you need to have a room that’s spacious enough to divide—something that’s not a problem with the spacious Family Rooms in the homes you’ll find at Fox Brook in Montgomery.

Another option is to locate your television, music, and gaming activities in a completely different space. The Fairfax provides a great solution for that. It offers a large (approximately 11’ x 17’) dedicated Media Room. Click here to take a look at the Fairfax floor plan. Your family can enjoy movies, music, Wii, or gaming in an environment devoted specifically for that purpose.

That means you can set your Family Room aside as a special room for the family and close friends where you can have quiet (or animated) conversations without the distraction of the television or music. You can still arrange one part of your Family room as a conversation area and have another area devoted to reading or some other quiet activity. 

The Fairfax at Fox Brook in Montgomery also features a separate formal living room. When you’re entertaining guests, you can gather in a more formal space that’s set aside for that purpose—reinforcing the idea the Family Room is a special space for family and close friends.

Those are just a couple of ways you can put the family back in the Family Room of your new home in New Jersey.