We now call these great rooms. I personally like great rooms. I think they help hold a family together. The parents who are successful in driving their kids away from them to their bedrooms and isolation when they are young, wonder why the kids don't want to be confiding, talking and playing with them when they get older. The Oberon III One of the rooms in the home with sweeping ramifications to the life style of the family, is the living room.
Many houses have formal living rooms used only for guests.
This is especially true if the formal living room is too large. A living room needs to be small enough to be intimate, or large enough for bigger groupings. When you sit down to carry on a conversation, you will find there is a comfortable distance. The comfort distance is three to seven feet. Generally, we don't want people closer to us than three feet nor do we want them much further than five to seven feet.