Little grands aren’t hard to move. Get it in the room and move it around until you like the sound.

quote:

Little grands aren’t hard to move.

I bet they are when the piano's castors are in cups and on carpet. Hopefully whoever we have doing the moving will work with us a little bit and let me play and move it around before they leave. But once the piano is in its castor cups it will be much harder to move so I want to have the basic placement determined as much as possible.

quote:

You've seen the action pulled out of a grand - we need some room straight back, so those angled choices can be awkward, unless there is enough room before we run into the wall!

Ron thanks for this info! So, one number often suggested is four feet out from the keyboard, but I think this number is for the pianist and bench. Would four feet work in order to pull the action out? And, say it's four feet, if the keyboard is at an angle to the wall, do you need four feet back from the part where the keyboard is closest to the wall?

One or five, No angle, if it were me, I’d do 5.

Jodi, are your preferences for that based on visuals, acoustics, or both?

I like 1 and 2. They remind me of how our piano was situated and how it is now (angle).

I definitely don’t like 6. I don’t like when people can come up behind me and I’m not expecting it. That TV room door would give me the startle reflex every time someone walked in. (I know, it’s Mr. SK, but still...) 1 and 2 you can see the doors with your peripheral vision.

Yes, I’m weird. I also can’t sit with my back to the door in restaurants.

7 I’m afraid you’re giving up too much room real estate; nobody is going to really want to go behind the piano to the small window.

We turned our piano on an angle because it looks more inviting, and also because the piano is a lot of sound for the size of the room, and this helped with that, too. Our ceilings are only 7’6” high. (Why did they drop the ceilings? I’ve seen that there’s more room up above the windows. Did they want to have the look of windows to the ceiling? I digress...)

Anyway, the piano was already on the round rug, with caster cups. I was talking to my tech about turning it on an angle, and he and I just swiveled the whole thing, rug and all, and it was fine. (There’s no pad under the rug; I don’t think it needs one. The rug is for sound dampening and to look pretty.) To that end, if we ever needed to pull the action out (which would be pretty rarely), I’m guessing we could just rotate the piano more.

Hope this helps!

Same here - #1 or #2. My piano is angled into the room, but I don't really look out. It doesn't really matter to me that I could look out into the room, since I don't.

I'm afraid #4 would make you unhappy if you have other options. It's similar to how my piano is, where one side is so close to the wall that you can't really get around it. I mean, it's possible, but I never only squeeze in there to clean. It's also not clear to me that you could easily move the bench around.

The others seem like they're ensuring that the front room is only the piano room -- giving up too much real estate, as AdagioM stated.

My 2c!

I should say I was surprised that I liked #1. Jodi mentioned that option, but I couldn't "see" it until the layouts you posted. Then it kind of clicked in.

My choices have to do with real estate and sound, and also how I feel when I am at the piano - it’s important to me to have a good “view”, so I like being able to look out into the room, or out a big window if possible. I prefer 5 because it feels like the sound will be best with this one (though I could be wrong) - more sound going out into a bigger area. And I said real estate because I feel like it’s important for that room to also be about the other people - like as a listener in that room, room enough so you could sit and listen. I think all those angled options take up too much space.

All the angled positions take up too much real estate for me. Number 7 in particular because it seems to leave no room for other seating in the room. It literally becomes the piano room.

I agree with AM on the startle factor associated with 6. It was my first choice because I was trying to find the optimum location taking into account room characteristics/environmental factors (avoiding doors,windows, and vents as much as possible).

For playing, I would prefer 5. But that puts the piano in front of a large window which would presumably have have its curtains closed most of the time.

Think that large window has a pretty good sized front porch outside it, (see porch swing) so it’s probably a better option than the other one (unless the other one is north facing).

I forgot about the porch.

But still, I thought temperature fluctuations are as much of an issue as light? Even well-insulated windows have a lower R value and you can get drafts from the temp differences.

Of course I live in the land of really cold winters, so maybe where SK lives it won't matter as much....

Gyaa this is much harder than I had imagined!!

So, adding to everyone's comments, here are some other factors I need to account for: 1) there needs to be a walk-way from the front door to the entrance to the TV room, so that area won't have permanent seating; 2) the impact of the window will be much more significant if it's the main window (ala #5) rather than the small window. And the curtains on the small window probably do a better job as insulation because of the higher fabric-to-window ratio there compared to the large window (which is actually a triple window).

#1, adjusted to make it possible to walk between the window and the straight side of the piano, might be a good option and would be a nice view for the pianist.

Also, #3, which I wasn't originally thinking I liked, looks like it would allow for maximum sound and it's a nice view for the pianist...

So, back to the walk-way area... Imagine there's a line from the right side (looking at picture) of the front door to the tv room door, and the space created between that line and to the small window is where there could be permanent seating. (The walk-way area could have temporary seating added for piano parties)

But anyway, if you think about it that way, it seems like an angled position might have more space for seating? Maybe no??

Here are modified versions of #1 and #3, adjusted make sure I can get b/w wall and piano etc.





Hmm, this is practically impossible....

An idea - you can define that hallway (path from front door to TV room doorway) by creating two half walls, one next to each door/doorway. Use two low bookcases, one at each doorway, to define it. Would create a little corner to tuck a chair into and would make it feel more comfortable because the person sitting in it would have something behind them rather than just sitting with their back exposed to an exterior door or interior doorway (that's bad feng shui - same as AM's startle observation about the piano as located in #6).

I think 9 has fewer options for guest seating. Only one chair would fit on the long window wall, and anything on the opposite wall would potentially be in the path to get to the bench.

In general, I'm having a harder time figuring out the rest of the room when the piano is angled. I would need to be trying out some of the other furniture in a the room to see how it looks; I just can't do it from a diagram. Sometimes things look like they will physically fit on paper but don't look right when you can see it IRL.

But I have a really hard time visualizing stuff like this, which is why I push furniture around a lot before deciding where to leave it....

quote:

Sometimes things look like they will physically fit on paper but don't look right when you can see it IRL.

Ugh, this is so true!

Re the half walls, that wouldn't work well by the front door, like I said that's our main doorway, and as per cultural preferences, we take our shoes off in the house (and the Japanese way of doing this is a bigger pita than you might think, b/c the houses here aren't set up to facilitate this, and Mr. SK is pretty particular about it). So when we come home together, we have to step inside, close the door while standing on a mat (for outdoor shoes) and take our shoes off on the mat before getting our indoor shoes and fully going into the room. So we need some width in that area that would be missing with a permanent piece of furniture.

I've actually thought when we're having a piano party, we may want to ask people to come in by the side door, and set up an area there for that purpose. But for now, the side door doesn't really work for our main entrance....

Gotcha. You could still do the half wall on the other side, though.

Just throwing out ideas....really hard to know what's viable without seeing the real space. Unless you're jodi and can visualize everything in your head....

What if the bookcase had the shelves facing into the path/hallway, rather than into the piano room. Could shoe storage be there?