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The Art of Placement

By Kit Davey

Do you need more space in your family room? Are you getting a little tired of the fifteen year old furniture arrangement in the living room? Would you like your bedroom to feel more balanced? 

Perhaps you'd like to give your home a fresh look, but you can't afford to buy even one new chair, much less bear the cost of a complete redecoration. Or you've just moved into a new home and don't know how to fit all of your furnishings into a smaller space. 

Then you're ready for one of the most powerful---and least expensive--- ways to create visual peace in your home:  the fine art of proper furniture placement.  By placing your old furnishings in their optimum locations, you will not only rediscover their beauty, but create a more flowing and cohesive looking home---and all for free.

Room Arranging Basics

The cornerstone of a pleasingly decorated and functional room is a well-planned, balanced furniture arrangement.  Here are a few tips on the art of placement to help you increase your home's comfort and beauty:

Start with function.  Decide how the room will be used and limit its function to one or two activities.  A room with an exercise bicycle, a desk, a bed and a sewing machine is jumbled and confusing to the eye.   Can you convert that junk/storage room into an exercise room by moving in all your sports equipment, a TV, a stereo and installing a large mirror?  Could you convert it into a working office by removing the exercise bicycle, storing the sewing machine in the closet and replacing the bed with a futon or couch?

Walk through your home and assess where you might be able to combine or limit functions, or make your furniture do double-duty:

• Move the desk from your bedroom into the den.  (Do you really need two desks?).
• Convert your little-used dining room into a family room and set up the extra bedroom as the dining room.
• If your home is small, create activity zones in each room.  Cluster all your hobby supplies in one corner, set up half of your bedroom as an office and use a screen to shield it from view. 

Draw a plot plan. If you make a scale drawing of the room and its furnishings you can experiment with new furniture placement without hurting your back.  This also frees you to try arrangements you might not dare in three dimensions.

Carefully measure the room and the footprint of each piece of furniture you plan to use.  Make a scale drawing of the room on a sheet of graph paper.   For rooms of 11" x 11" or less, use 1/2" scale ; use 1/4" scale for a larger room.  Then, make scale drawings of each piece of furniture and cut them out.  Start rearranging the paper furniture on your scale drawing. 

Try every option, even the outlandish ones.  Let friends and family try, too.  You may come up with several arrangements which work well, or end up with your original placement (If you do, it's still worth having gone through this exercise to prove that you have the best arrangement possible).

As you're playing with the room's furniture arrangement on paper, keep the next five points in mind:

Create a focal point.  On entering a room, your eye searches for a center of interest.  Find a focal point to keep the eye from flitting about restlessly, and build your furniture arrangement around it.  Typical focal points can include a fireplace, a large window, a colorful piece of artwork, a cleverly arranged bookcase, a piano, the space over a bed or (heaven forbid!) your desk.  If your room lacks a natural focal point, create your own:

• Use dramatic lighting aimed at a sculpture or framed piece of art.
• Create an alter-like effect by adorning a dresser or table with a grouping of family treasures with artwork hung on the wall above.
• Hang a collection of art with the largest piece in the center and smaller pieces placed in a symmetrical pattern on either side.
• Place a chair on either side of an armoire.  If not used for the TV, open its doors and accessorize the interior with a few pictures on stands, your antique books, a vase of flowers and several folded quilts.  Hang tassels from the door pulls.

It's OK to have more than one focal point.  Arrange a second grouping of furniture towards it, or place one large grouping at an angle to take in both centers of interest.

Group your furnishings.  Create inviting conversation areas or functional furniture groupings to break up the space.  Furniture looks better when arranged so that the pieces "relate" to each other.  A huge room with a lonely couch on one end is not as welcoming as a pair of chairs angled towards each other with a table in between.

• In a family or living room, avoid lining the furniture up around the room like a dance hall.  Bring the furniture in towards the center of the room.  Try placing a pair of love seats in an L-configuration instead of opposite each other.  Couches should be eight feet or less from each other to avoid having to yell across the room.  For a dynamic look, try placing the couch at an angle.
• If the room is unusually long or large, set up two or three groupings rather than one large one.  Place a pair of occasional chairs or extra dining room chairs along a wall with a small table in between them.  Or set up a solitary reading station by angling in a large upholstered chair from the corner and adding a floor lamp and an end table.  Set up a game table and chairs in a little-used corner.
• Children prefer open floorspace to play in, so place the furniture against the walls in your kid's room, in the playroom or TV room.
• If you have "holes" in your floor plan, go on a treasure hunt for pieces in your house to fill them.  Try an old trunk or bench as a coffee table, a chair or a painted wooden box as a bedside table, or an old desk as a bedroom vanity.

Blend and match. Avoid mixing too many styles, colors, and sizes of furniture.  Some people can create harmony in an ececletic design, but most of us end up with a weird mix of college dorm and Lucy Ricardo's living room.

• If you want to mix styles, keep one or more design elements constant:  the same wood, same color, same scale, or period.
• If you have a real mish-mash of styles, move out a piece or two, or look elsewhere in you home for a piece that is more appropriate.
• It's best to display furnishings that are in good shape and that you are proud to own.  If you can't afford to replace tired or mismatching pieces now, use them until you can.  Make do by placing them in less prominent locations, paint, cover with fabric or creatively disguise in any way possible.
• Don't separate matching pieces.  Pair your two red armchairs next to each other or on either side of your couch, but don't put one in a far corner or another room unless absolutely necessary.

Guide traffic. Allow two to three feet for traffic flow.  Traffic does not have to flow in a straight line through a room.  Use the furniture to control the traffic pattern.  For example:

• If traffic flows through the middle or diagonally across a room, place a sofa and sofa table in the natural pathway and funnel the traffic to either or both sides.  Conversely, guide the traffic  through the center of the room by creating two separate seating areas to either side.
• Pull a living room seating arrangement toward the center of the room so that the traffic flows behind it.
• Place your dining room or kitchen table and chairs in an "x" configuration, instead of a "t"  so that the chairs pull out into the corners of the room.  This will allow for more space to slip in and out from the table.
• Allow enough space between your bed and the dresser so that you can stand while pulling open a drawer (This may mean moving the bed so it is off-center, but function should always come first).

Balance the furnishings. Don't let the visual weight of an impressive focal point or a large piece of furniture throw the room out of balance.  For example:

• If you have a wall of dark bookshelves, place an armoire, a large couch with art over it, or another substantial piece of furniture on the opposite wall.
• If you have a piano on one end of the room place a conversation area on the other.
• Don't cover one wall with art and leave the opposite one barren or sparsely covered.
• If your fireplace is in the center of the wall, place items of approximately the same height and visual weight to either side, rather than leaving one side empty, giving it a lop-sided look.

Have fun.  Let your creative juices flow and don't be afraid to experiment.  When you find the right home for Grandma's rocker your heart will sing.  Rearranging your furnishings will let you rediscover the beauty of your possessions and breathe new life into your home.

© Kit Davey 2008

Kit Davey, Allied Member, A.S.I.D., specializes in redesign, design consulting, staging and professional organizing. Call her at(650)367-7370.

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