Great home!

I would first think about flipping the furniture, so that the couches are one facing the fireplace and the other with its back to the kitchen, sofa table behind that one, with one interesting lamp on it. Two different end tables on either side of the other couch, with lamps there as well, will give you great lighting and allow you to shut off the glaring overheads.

Then I would add a pair of great chairs in front of the bookcases with a small table beside each of them, and a great floor lamp between them. Or you could do a small game table or partner desk with a lamp on it there instead. I would also think about adding bookcase lights on top of each bookcase.

Another small lamp on the bookcase area by the stairs, perhaps a wall-mounted plug in lamp, would be nice, too.

I think one larger piece of art, or a clock, or an interesting mirror, would be nicer over the fireplace. The piece of art could be your inspiration for colors.

Do you and your DH have favorite colors, or a certain feel (casual, modern, old-world, etc) that you want for the room? The couch you have picked is transitional, but the chair leans to more modern.

Are you going to add window treatments? I think that would be great, and would help balance the weight of the bookcases and stairs. A valance with some texture or pattern, hung about halfway between the top of the window and the ceiling, would be good with a woven wood shade in a darker tone underneath.

What Les said... :)
I would absolutely do something large in dark wood over the fireplace- like a large, round mirror perhaps, to balance out the dark wood bookcases.
Once you give us an ispiration piece, style or fabric(s), we can better make suggestions. Do you have some books or blogs that you can look at to find a room or 2 that you love? Can you show us a close up of your large artwork, please?

As a multi-purpose room (library + LR +???) with cathedral ceilings, the full wall of books plus bookshelves on the stair wall do not give the room the same feel as if the room were solely a library. Would you consider adding some doors to the bookshelves and reducing the number of books on the remaining open shelves? It would reduce the busy-ness and better allow one's eye to travel around your room.

If I'm seeing your pictures correctly, those are windows, not sliders, yes?

That means you have a LOT of floor space to fill, so you can have different areas/functions for the room. How do you use the space? Is it just sitting, reading and formal entertaining? or is this the real gathering space for tv, games, etc. The decor should match the use of the space.

I agree with Les about adding some visual separation between the dining and living areas. I also agree about the library area. You would need to still pare down the books, but get consistent bookcase....these are mix and match now. You can do that relatively inexpensively by buying basic shelves and then dressing them up with crown molding and making them look more built in. Paint them to match the molding in the room and it will give you a whole new look. Add lighting to the fronts of the cabinets to add interest to the books and bring your attention lower and make the space feel warmer.

Putting a nice lower round table with club chairs on either side and lamps will fill out that space nicely.

Then I would have a "cross linking device" as christopher lowell used to call them...something like a low back sofa or even a backless sofa so that in party situations people can talk to each other across the space and the furniture doesn't block the view of the library area.

Some people are not comfortable with that choice until they realize you've added a comfy bed to stretch out on and read in the living room.

Chairs facing the fire place and the sofa with it's back to the dining area as Les suggested, backed with a sofa table with some lamps on it can round out the space. It looks like you might even have space for a larger table there that can double as a desk area with a chair pulled up to it, adding more function to the space.

The big elephant in the room is the vaulted ceiling. Christopher Lowell suggests vaulted ceilings should be painted darker than the walls to help bring them down and make the space feel cozier. Lynette Jennings recommended that you can treat the "invisible water line" in these rooms as the ceiling height and just let what's above, be up above. What the ceiling height really drives though is scale. Scale is everything in this space. For example, note how lost the art looks along the staircase given the ceiling height. A few large dramatic pieces in a room like this will go a long way to make the space feel manageable.

Lighting is also an issue...the large recessed cans will light the space generally, but don't add cozy. (I hope they are on dimmers!) You might go to a lighting store where a designer will come to your home and make suggestions...you will need a way to highlight key areas, like over the fireplace, the windows to make them feel more special. Maybe smaller cans, halogens or some other choice might make the light less obtrusive (or it just may be how the camera picked it up for the picture.)

Area rugs will help define the different uses in the space.

Window treatments want to be asymmetrical, IMO...with matching valances but drapes only on the far side....if you want to do drapes. I always like them as adding fabric to the room helps acoustics and makes it feel warmer. These below are too heavy for your room, but give you an idea of how it adds balance to the wall, esp when the windows are as close as they are to the fireplace.

If you like that large painting on the wall, you can use that as your inspiration...it looks like it has fab colors in it to work with....

If there's a Barnes & Noble close to you, I'd go look at their decorating books. If you see one that jumps out at you, (after thumbing through it) buy it. The grocery store has a lot of decorating magazines also.

The most jarring thing that sticks out to me in your room is there's no color. Don't be afraid of color! Have you thought about accent colors you'd like to have in your room?

With the old sofas and the potentially new one above, they disappear in the room because of the carpet & wall color.

Layering a large area rug on top of the carpet would give you great color.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't a coffee and sofa table look better if they were a dark wood color like the bookcases?

I would also remove the bookshelf from the stair wall.

I want to stay home and think about all these things, but work calls.

In the meantime, answers to a few questions:

This room is used for reading, sitting, and reasonably frequent, but casual entertaining. We don't entertain formally at all, but we do have parties (maybe 8 a year? 10?). (We're those people who say they need a house for entertaining, and we really do :-) People sit in here, and often pull up chairs to play a game around the coffee table.

We do not have a TV in the room. (The only TV is in the rec room in the basement.)

The large blue artwork on the wall is probably not staying. (I bought it years and years ago and it's been in the main living area the whole time and I'm semi-bored with it.)

I prefer transitional pieces, my husband tends towards traditional. I lean towards purples :-), but don't want to do that heavily in the living room--maybe plum? DH is interested in blues, but I'm not sure what shades, and he doesn't seem firm on that.

I definitely do feel the room is incomplete--which is why almost everything is going.

We have talked about making the bookcases consistent--and moving some into his den, which means we'll have more places for books :-).

The bookcases by the stairs had games on them until yesterday, when we moved them onto new bookcases in my office (which would be a formal dining room if we dined formally, but we don't.) (Pictures of that room later :-)

Patterns? Colors? Where should I even look for inspiration? I started looking at rug ideas to get a sense of what I liked. DH thinks I should figure out upholstery colors first, but I thought rugs and pillows might provide inspiration. Does that even make sense?

You can use anything to provide inspiration...so long as it's something you love. I have used fabric, magazine pictures, flowers I saw on vacation...

a piece of art, a piece of tile, a view out the window, and even the color of my cat's eyes as inspiration for rooms I've done over the years.

I've often looked at birds and thought how wonderful their plumage would be to inspire a space.

{{gwi:1709397}}

I wouldn't necessarily start with a rug, though it too can work. IMO, it needs to be something you really love...if you love it then you will love the room that springs from it. You might think about mood...do you want it darker, more somber? or do you want it lighter and brighter? formal or informal? bold and bright or soft and calm?

Traditional/transitional blend well so that shouldn't be a problem. If you use the room for parties and informal entertaining, then comfy seating is a must...I'm liking the backless sofa even more as people can sit on either side of it to carry on conversations. You can add two small side chairs to flank the fireplace and the arrangement I suggested will allow for a nice large square coffee table in the middle for people to play games at.

You've got a great space to work with...once you find your inspiration, the pieces will fall into place.

Sorry about the above link....I was trying to post a picture of a wood duck whose plummage I think is so intereting...

For inspiration do a google search of traditional/transitional living room pictures. And buy magazines and books that catch your fancy.

When I was in your situation, my favorite accent colors played a big role in buying rugs and furniture.

You definitely need more color or texture and art.

A floorplan sketch would help - I can't see what is next to what in most of the photos.

The mass of dark bookcases and all those books visually tilts the room towards them because the rest of the room is so monochrome. (that's not bad ... crowded bookcases are an indication of excellent character).

I would make a small reading area with colorful comfy chair and good lamp right next to the bookcases. Don't worry about matching the bookcases with each other yet. Let's balance the room.

To add weight to the sofa area, add a medium to dark rug under the sofa area and do something to those tables. Unless they are fabulous wood, paint them one of the colors from the rug or darken them.

The sofas look good, and if they are comfortable, keep them and add a throw and some pillows to blend with the comfy reading chair.

The entryway and the windows flanking the fireplace are begging for substantial molding, to give them more presence and a scale to match the room. A deeper color to the walls, to make the molding stand out.

I love a wall of bookcases but they need to match. You could try for a built-in effect, painting them to match the molding. Clear off the top of the bookcases - no books at all up there - it looks cluttered now. Then look to the whole effect of the bookcase tops and the wall above as a place for display - large wall art, sculptural pieces, large scale plants - but it all has to work as unified decor not storage space. Sort the books by color so you don't get such a spotty effect.

If you get new bookcases you can go even taller, with a library ladder to fill some of your vertical space and not have a giant void up there.

Oriental rugs are classic for a library.

The furniture below the staircase draws the eye - again it needs to work as decor, all the pieces complementing each other, instead of being a catch-all for whatever you have on the shelves. Check out Japanese tansu.

{{gwi:1709399}}

Here is a link that might be useful: stair ideas

I really appreciate everyone's input.

DH and I were discussing this last night and he wants to pick the sofa/chair colors first and then pick a rug and artwork that went with it. I told him I needed to pick inspiration first--artwork, rug, something that spoke to me and gave me a vision for the rest of the room. It was clear we disagreed, so I told him that one of us needed to budge and it had to be him :-).

So, I've started looking at artwork and rugs and building a file of pieces that speak to me and give me a sense of what I want the room to "feel" like. I want it to be bright and light and cheerful. I want it casual/informal. I want people to feel they can tuck their legs up under them on the couch or put their feet on the coffee table.

I am definitely afraid of color, so the art and rugs I am looking at are challenging my comfort zone, but I know that if I *don't* do that, I won't be happy with the result.

I want the room arranged to encourage people to treat the dining area and living area as a flowing space, so that the living room welcomes people who are in the dining area and vice versa, since during parties, people flow back and forth from the two areas.

We currently have enough open space to set up temporary card/game tables. I'm not convinced (or unconvinced) about putting a permanent table and chairs in this room for games, but since the family plays in the dining area, and we have lots of card tables to set up for parties, we don't need a permanent game space in this room. There's also an area for games in the rec room.

As it turns out, the couches aren't comfortable anymore--they're over 20 years old and they are sagging. We have plywood under the couch cushions to make it usable until we get a new one, and the fabric isn't as nice it once was (kids, cats, that sort of thing.) We don't think it's worth re-upholstering and re-cushioning.

The tables are solid oak (no veneers), and I'm not sure I can bring myself to paint them, although I might strip and restain them if we decide to keep them. If we end up not using them, then I'll put them in the basement to pass on to one of the kids when they furnish a place. The primary reason I'd consider keeping the coffee table is that it's sturdy enough to sit on--and people do sit on it.

We don't plan to add a desk to the area. We have plenty of desks in other rooms and if we put one in here it wouldn't get used.

Our purchase plans include: couch, loveseat, 2 (or more chairs), various coffee/occasional tables, rug, lamps, other accessories, and artwork.

In other words, the only thing that stays is the bookcase wall :-). (And I think I've found a source to get 3 more of the bookcases on the left, so we'll probably do that and move the 3 on the right to DH's den so that all 6 on that wall match.) The bookcases are staying wood--I brought up the idea of a built-in white bookshelf wall 5 years ago and was roundly shot down. (DH is still surprised I even suggested the idea.)

The carpet is in good shape and we aren't replacing it and DH doesn't want to paint, even though I'd like to add some additional color to the walls. (The walls are BM Shake Beige.)

I like both ideas people have brought up about adding interest to the windows--either a window treatment or molding. The windows don't need privacy coverage, but I've been so afraid of doing something wrong that I've done nothing (so they look incomplete).

And I totally agree with birdgardner that the bookcases and the stairway wall look cluttered (and it was worse--I removed some things to my at-home office this weekend.) I don't have much "large scale" art/sculpture/anything, so once I get some key pieces in place, I guess I'll be looking at decorating that area. (and convincing DH that the top of the bookcases are 'mine' and get to be book-free)

So, my immediate goal is to identify some inspiration pieces to capture what I want so that I can select out from there.

My other immediate goal is to post the floor plan--it'll help me to figure out what main pieces we need to acquire.

Thanks everyone--this is really helping. (I'm way too old to find this so hard.)

How about painting the staircase white to make it blend with the other white-painted mouldings in the space?

Consider switching to dark tables to work better with the bookcases?

How about a small sectional -- that would face the bookcases -- and then add a comfy reading chair/ottoman with a standing lamp and table in front of the bookcases??

A dark-framed round mirror would look wonderful above the fireplace! Not sure of what size that would fit your space -- but I've included a link to an example ....

Switch one of the bookcases (the short one that is to the left of the door in the second photo) to the wall under the blue artwork.

Here is a link that might be useful: small mirror -- lamps plus

You can re-stain the oak tables darker easily - no stripping required. General Finishes Gel stain can wipe on over thoroughly cleaned older finishes. Just scrub it down with steel wool and mineral spirits to get rid of any wax and wipe on the shade you want.

Unless you grew up with a color adventurer like I did, it's hard to take the plunge. Stick to neutrals with the big stuff and get adventurous with pillows and artwork.

Things are happening.

I've purchased two pieces of art: one for over the fireplace: (24"x36")

I decided I wanted art rather than a mirror over the fireplace--it seemed more "like me" and more of a statement than a mirror.

I also found something for the little alcove that opens to the hall closet and to our bedroom. (24"x24")

I'm happy with these pieces and with the colors and with the somewhat eclecticness of a abstract floral and an impressionist Italian landscape. I think they both suit our family and the way we are.

I'm realizing that I lean towards "lighter" furniture--and we're quite informal, but that I'm definitely not into straight lines and contemporary.

We had an in-home consultation from a local furniture company--she said she'd describe me as 'informal traditional'. She was more into listening to what DH wants than what I want :-), but I'm starting to get a clearer idea.

I'm thinking of bringing in the plums/eggplants of the two paintings as the couch and loveseat and the medium greens (although darker is possible) as the chairs. (Assuming we get a loveseat, couch, and 2 chairs) He would prefer having the couch and loveseat the same color--I'm pretty sure I'd like them different intensities of the same color.

We'll be replacing the tables--they're just too late-80s early 90s (we had a very typical Southwestern style living room, which worked in our then-Tucson home).

Everyone's guidance has been really helpful. Additional advice is much appreciated.

Our living room floor plan:

I really can't suggest much except to say that I think the 2 paintings you just posted are wonderful and I would be happy to have them in my house.:)
(where did you see them?)

sheilaaus122, I found both of these on etsy.com.

The Italian Lake scene is by Karen Tarlton: http://www.etsy.com/shop/Karensfineart?ref=seller_info

The abstract floral is by Linda Monfort: http://www.etsy.com/people/lindamonfort?ref=ls_profile

I'm really happy with both of them and can't wait to get them. They "can" be hung unframed, but as we pick out other pieces, I intend to frame both of them. I find them 'unfinished' if they're not framed.

I like having original art--although we do have some things that are not (maps, Santa Fe opera prints, and a few inexpensive copies/framed prints of famous artists), I'm mostly now only buying original stuff.