Pc123v,
My advice to listen in the nearfield was not to advocate that this be the setup you use, but, rather, as a means of diagnosing a problem. Because you heard better sound in that position, it does indeed indicate that you would benefit from proper room treatment. This can be as simple as covering part of the walls with a tapestry or having an area rug on the floor. Bare walls--without bookcases or anything else to scatter sound--are sources of problems.
As for actual acoustic treatment, there are panels that can be purchased that are reasonably decent looking so that your room does not have to look like a recording studio. I will mention, again, GIK Acoustics. They make relatively thin panels that can they cover in fabric that can be printed with whatever you want (you send them a photo) or some stock pattern/image that they frequently use. I am not saying that they are the best, in terms of sound, but, I do know that their products work and look decent.
I know some creative people that have cut plywood into geometric patterns and then covered the plywood with fill material and then covered everything with colored fabric. These geometric blocks were then assembled into a really nice pattern that looked like art, rather than room treatment, and this worked reasonably well.
It often does not take that much treatment to transform a room (which means it is also easy to transform a room too much). Good luck.