Article:
Good furniture placement
By Shelley Anderson
The Journal Newspapers - September 2006
Good furniture placement starts with analyzing the physical space and its intended use. When planning furniture arrangement, think about how many people utilize the room, traffic flow, and how the room will be used.
Whether you’re adding new furniture or rearranging what you already have, there are a few basics steps to ensure a pleasing outcome. First, measure your room and draw it on graph paper. For every foot your room measures mark off 1/4 inch" on your graph paper. Next, measure your furniture. I find it easy to manipulate the furniture on the graph paper plan if I make templates out of colored paper for furniture pieces. Decide what your focal point will be: a fireplace, window or other feature of the room. Now start laying the furniture cutouts on the plan, starting with the largest pieces.
Allow for general traffic paths: your major traffic lanes will be 36 to 48 inches; minor paths need 24 inches. Allow enough space for pulling out chairs in dining rooms. Generally you need 24 inches per chair just to pull it out to sit in it.
When creating conversation areas, keep furniture pieces close enough to each other so that people can talk easily.
Avoid placing a chair by itself. Use it with a side table, or bring it into a grouping
One of the most common mistakes people make is lining furniture up along the walls. This tends to look like a waiting room. Don’t be afraid to pull your furniture out into the room. If you do place your sofa along a wall, consider placing a console table behind it to add depth to your arrangement. This is also a great place to use some ambient lighting––a pair of buffet type table lamps in a scale to fit the proportions of your furnishings.
If you decide to place your sofa with its back to one of the entry areas, soften the large back with the console table, or use an arrangement of large floor vases or trunk type boxes with some greenery.
Many times a room’s shape is challenging. For instance, a long and narrow room measuring 12 by 24 feet may seem impossible to pleasantly arrange into a user friendly space. Start by dividing the room into two "zones," one being two-thirds of the space. At one end make the larger conversation area, using your larger pieces of furniture. The other “zone” could be just two chairs, an ottoman and a shared side table creating a quiet area for reading.
Shelley Anderson has been creating interiors in the greater Seattle area since 1990.You may contact her at (206) 719-6814 or email her at
shelley.anderson@shelleyandersoninteriors.com.