I prefer to be within speaking and seeing of my family room, I took over the dining room since we have an eat in kitchen. Since it is not a huge room, old farm house, I have a spare bedroom in the basement, since 3 of my 4 kids are now gone, and use it for storage of bolts of fabric and my dress forms. I also do custom sewing for proms and weddings. I spend so many hours sewing that if I was in a seperate area away from family would never see them. My machine is tucked into a corner so the noise is cut down.