I, too, would go for the bigger room. You will be surprised how fast it will fill up on you. If you have an upstairs, let that be for company. It will be your house so set it up for you & DH. You will also want to consider how long you will be able to handle the stairs. It gets harder every year for me to do the stairs so I have moved a lot of my quilting to the dinning room. I do keep most of my supplies upstairs but only tackle the stairs when I need to switch fabrics. I keep enough downstairs to do at least 4 projects before a upstairs run. Besides, DH would rather I be closer to him. If your downstairs room dose not have a door to hide everything, that would be a good reason to make a quilted curtain to close it off.