5 mistakes in furniture arrangement
Usually, when we choose furniture and decor elements for our home, we focus our attention on the appearance and functionality of each piece of furniture. However, another comfort factor, no less important, but so often overlooked, is the competent arrangement of furniture in the room. Even if the furniture and other elements of home comfort are chosen correctly, a bad plan for the arrangement of these items in a room can ruin our best efforts.
We’ll take a look at 5 of the most common interior decorating mistakes and how you can easily avoid them.
Mistake one: “everything, everywhere, from everywhere”
In all the variety of stylish accessories, decor and furniture, it is easy to fall into the natural temptation and thoroughly buy yourself home all the most beautiful and more. And immediately faced with the problem: how now to arrange all this, and just as effectively as it looked in the interiors from the picture or in the company store? Unfortunately, we will have to choose: either arrange “everything, but ugly”, or “beautiful, but not everything”.
That is why, on all “interiors from the picture” and in all exhibition halls, one rule applies: the designer first chooses the center of the composition, the so-called focal point or visual center – any piece of furniture on which the visual emphasis is placed, and the rest of the arrangement is planned “around” and “from” this very subject.
Create a “reference point” around that detail of your future interior that you like the most – it can be the most comfortable armchair in the world, a large luxurious sofa, an elegant lamp, a warm fireplace or your favorite poster on your wall. All other furnishings and other decorations should only complement or emphasize the central object. Avoid too many things that divert attention from the main thing. This will give the room a distinct character and style, perhaps most closely reflecting your mood.
Mistake two: “more furniture – more comfort”
It is not easy to feel such a desired coziness and harmony of life, laying a difficult route around the room, filled to the limit with sofas, armchairs and tables, no matter how comfortable and beautiful they would be.
Experienced interior designers give important advice: in order to move around the house comfortably, a person needs about 90 cm of free space. Therefore, when arranging furniture, do not forget to leave enough space on the layout of your room at the doors, as well as in the aisles between interior items. Remember, competent space planning creates a feeling of freedom so important for comfort.
Error three: “everything is included”
One of the most common mistakes when arranging furniture is the desire to buy all the furniture in a single set, and then arrange the whole set in a room in one continuous array. Firstly, it is not at all necessary to create the interior of your room from pieces of furniture of only one series, one manufacturer, with the same model names.
Today, the range of furniture stores, the flexibility of furniture production and the variety of modern approaches to interior issues allow you to successfully combine sofas, armchairs and poufs from different series and combine this choice with tables and cabinet furniture of other stylistic designs. Such a solution will make it possible to avoid piles of identical furniture in one corner of the room, make the interior light, and the atmosphere sparse and unobtrusive, but at the same time stylish and sophisticated.
Mistake four: “put against the wall”
Until now, there is an old, but viable stereotype – sofas and armchairs, as well as chairs, should be placed only along the walls, otherwise it will be ugly and uncomfortable. This misconception has been going on since the old days, when rooms in standard apartments were small, and many sofas and armchairs were made with a backrest in ugly technical drapery. Even now, when spacious living rooms are no longer a rarity, and furniture factories will gladly produce absolutely all the details of your sofa in a fabric carefully chosen by you, they often prefer to place a corner sofa modestly against the wall, and exactly on its two sides add, like two sentries, a set of 2 armchairs. Of course, such an arrangement in certain interiors is quite appropriate, but in no case do not embarrass yourself with this well-established rule.
Modern interior design allows and, moreover, welcomes the placement of sofas and armchairs in the middle of the room, thereby forming the very “visual center” in creating a cozy and modern home space.
Mistake five: “on the carpet or out of the carpet”
In an attempt to successfully arrange furniture and at the same time lay out carpets in a new room, we sometimes get lost in options: either the suitable carpet is not too large, but there is a lot of furniture, or the geometry of the room does not allow covering the entire floor space, and we are faced with the question of how correctly arrange the furniture, taking into account every nuance.
The main subtlety of the combination of sofas, armchairs and tables with carpets is one simple rule: if you have a carpet spread in the center of the room, then in no case put the furniture on the border between the carpet and the “bare” floor. Within this interior zone, all pieces of furniture that have legs must stand either only on the carpet, or exclusively outside the carpet.