Five furniture layout mistakes to avoid

Designing a new room can be exciting! It’s tempting to rush ahead with exciting stuff like choosing paint colours or shopping for your new sofa. But before you start picking out fabrics it’s important to get really clear on your layout.

Layout is so important. It will determine how well (or badly) your room functions, how easy it is to move around the space, and how balanced and harmonious your space feels. So it’s important not to skip this part! Planning a layout is a bit like a puzzle, it can be tricky to get right and can leave you scratching your head.

So to help, here are my five furniture layout mistakes to avoid.

Five furniture layout mistakes to avoid

#1. Creating obstacles and pinch points. 

Whatever the room, people will always need to be able to walk into it and then around it, ideally without turning sideways or grazing their shins. So allowing space between two items such as a wall and a piece of furniture, or two fixed items of furniture is important. Ninety centimetres is the optimum space to allow for the average person to walk easily through the space. If you reduce this amount of space you will start to create pinch points that can make the space uncomfortable and poorly designed. Pinch points are fine for less-used areas of a room, like if someone needs to squeeze behind a sofa to pull the curtains in the evening, but they are not okay for the main pathway through a space.

The other thing to consider is any large obstacles, you don’t want to walk into a room and immediately feel confronted by a bulky piece of furniture you have to manoeuvre around. The space will feel more welcoming and inviting if you create an easy pathway into it.

Five furniture layout mistakes to avoid

#2. Trying to make a large rectangular room do one thing.

If you have a large living room then it will always feel better designed if you allocate two-thirds to a comfortable seating area and one-third something else, such as a desk area, dining area, reading area or play area. It’s very challenging to make a large room serve one purpose such as a large seating area, without it feeling like a doctor’s waiting room.

It’s all to do with the golden ratio, our brains like to see things in thirds so you have maths to thank for this one. 

Five furniture layout mistakes to avoid

#3. Leaving a large disco-floor-shaped space in the middle of a room.

If you have a lovely large space then please furnish it! The space in our homes is for living in, so please don’t place all your furniture around the edge of a room and stare at a sad, empty space you could be enjoying! Unless you are designing a disco room or a yoga studio of course. Whilst it may feel that the more visible space you see the bigger your room will feel, it’s actually the opposite. A large, space that’s just for walking through will make a room feel smaller and unwelcoming. 

Five furniture layout mistakes to avoid

#4. Too much visual weight at one end of the room.

Balance is very important when it comes to organising the furniture in a room. You don’t want one end of the room to have a lot more visual weight than the other end, otherwise, it may feel like a capsizing ship where all the furniture has slid to one end of the deck. 

The good news is that whilst you can’t control the physical weight of items you can influence the visual weight of the items. Here’s what I mean. If you have a large corner sofa that could make one end of the room feel very ‘heavy’ then reduce the visual weight of that item by choosing a lighter fabric rather than darker, and by going for a sofa up on legs so it feels more elegant and less bulky. If you have two armchairs opposite that sofa you can go darker on these items and go fully upholstered rather than a style with open wooden arms to make these two items more visually heavy to balance with the sofa. 

Five furniture layout mistakes to avoid

#5. Placing rectangular items in corners.

Corners are perfect for more rounded items like armchairs, large trees/plants or floor lamps with large round shades. These will soften a space and stop things looking too angular. But sometimes it is unavoidable and you will need to place a sideboard, console table or media unit in a corner. This is absolutely fine as long as you don’t have another rectangular item along the adjacent wall. If you have two rectangular items that meet each other at a corner they will butt up against each other very awkwardly which will not make the space feel good. 

So there you have it. My top five furniture layout mistakes to avoid. 

How can I help you?

If you’re unsure of how to unlock the potential of your room then why not get in touch? I offer a room planner service that will deliver you the best layout options for your space. You can find out more about it here. And if you have any questions then feel free to set up a discovery call with me so we can chat about your project.

Until next time, happy designing,

Sarah x