Door and window placement is crucially important. Our 1913 home has a well proportioned living room but one wall is a larger cased opening to the dining room. Another has a large pocket door. Remaining two walls have tall windows. It wasn’t built for large flatscreen tvs or recliners. We have done the best we can but find only one layout works.

While inspecting a new Admirals Club under construction at DFW Airport, I was impressed with the feel of the entry area. I was driven to determine the reason and settled on the golden ratio after careful investigation. The other proportion was the height of the room 8 - 10 - 13. You can manipulate the square room with windows or doors and height to give it a better feel, but the ration should be considered. The other component lost in current design was indirect lighting, providing a hidden source of light. We use them both when clients will allow.

Wow, this explains SO much about why my old apartment's living room always felt a bit cramped, even though it was technically a decent size! Definitely going to keep this 1:1.56 ratio in mind for my next place.

You can't have that in every room bc of design constraints... But generally the rectangle shape is better..

Brilliant advice 🤩 it is amazing how the golden ratio just reals right all the time

Virtually all homes in the United States until the 1890s consisted entirely of square rooms.

Lots of condos nowadays are not square or rectangular. Curved building envelopes, pie-shaped floor plates, and structural step-backs force interior layouts into non-rectangular geometries. Modern high-rise floor plans often prioritize architectural exterior statements—like sweeping glass facades, elliptical towers, or angled site boundaries—over orthogonal internal space.

Yes and no.
Yes, for regular design the golden rule makes sense.
But, for me - as a designer and builder of octagonal active small wood houses -, a square-ish living room is no issue at all.
I have strong focal points in the big slate of exquisite marble surrounding the chimney and the panoramic 8x5ft window (with an amazing view of a mountain), I get the best of space utilization by having an octagonal wood floor (instead of the rug) off-center area (one side being the panoramic window) where the leather chairs and the sofas sit around a coffee marble table, while behind them I have no dead space, but access to the surrounding library and access to bedroom, bathroom (that otherwise would need a corridor). Basically I integrated the passing corridors into the living area. And that is fine, giving the (otherwise small) living room a much needed spatiality (beside the 35° degrees inclined roof, going up from 9 to about 19 feet high - but to only 14 feet for all the other rooms).
And then the living room looks really big, but still cosy and gorgeous.
So I got the corridors to be not only space through which you pass, but also spaces with storage on the walls, with practicality etc. Thus having no dead spaces.
I consider that fitting a bedroom (having also dressing and office space and one of the two glass sides of the chimney), a living room that includes the other glass side of the chimney, a library on the vertical, a mini-bar, a tiny dining area and access to the terrace, an average-sized L-shaped kitchen (but with a lot of storage on the vertical), a pantry/vestibule, an utility tiny space at the entrance, nearby a spectacular star-shaped (under the high roof, from 9 to 18 feet) "man cave" , the garage with a small toilet, a cellar and an average terrace (with views to both mountains around us) within only 99 sqm. a great achievement.
A small (octagonal active wood) house by American (and even European) standards, but tall and cozy, getting the luxury feeling (and amenities) on an average budget.
Luxury is not about expensive and huge houses, but about getting the feeling of a warm home.

Interesting theory. How does it apply to bedrooms? Seems to me that giant bed is always in the way.

If you are home shopping, one of those electronic tape measures is the thing to carry. They are fast and accurate and inexpensive.

Would you also convert ft to meters?😅

This is true except for a 12 x 12 bedroom which has always puzzled me.  I lived in a 12 x 12 bedroom with my sister as a kid and the objects in the room themselves created the ratio. Two beds, two dressers, a desk.  Check it out.

How should the height relate to the length and width? What's the ideal vertical proportion?

"Download the free playbook built from 500+ real projects to know exactly what your estimate is missing before you sign anything."  Where is this located?  Thanks.

(2:46 mark) A 400 SQ FT room that is 20 x 20 doesn't cost the same to build as a 400 SQ FT room that is 16 x 25 as one has 40 FT of perimeter wall and the other 41 FT, so it costs a little more, taken a step further a 400 SQ FT room that is 8 x 50 costs a lot more.

The script triggered my AI-dar.

you forgot to talk about hight

But WHY?  What is there in our brains that makes this feel "good"? Any research?

5/8 Devine Ratio...

Please don't perpetuate the Parthenon myth: there is no definable evidence the golden ratio was used, it's a recent development, and none of the measurements of the Parthenon actually properly conform to it.