I’ve always found that furniture layout, more than any color or decor trend, gives the most insight into the process of interior design. Any collection of beautiful furniture will feel awkward in a room if it’s been placed without thought. New designers often overlook the impact that the layout of a sofa, table, or chair has on the livability of a room. Before you run out to buy something new, it’s worth your time to play with how your current furniture affects your room. This exercise is the best way to begin developing the spatial awareness that you need to make good design decisions.
Let’s start with a basic exercise that focuses on the flow of the room. Simply walk the path from the door to the back wall of your room. As you walk, see if there’s a natural flow. If there’s a chair that you find yourself bumping into or a table that feels a bit too close as you pass, shift it over a few inches and try walking through the room again. This quick exercise will teach you about circulation. Just 15 minutes of nudging your furniture a few inches in either direction will show you whether your current layout supports or undermines the flow of your room.
An easy way to spot poor circulation is when every piece of furniture has been pushed up against the walls of the room. At first glance, this seems like a great strategy because it leaves the center of the room open, but when you try it, you’ll find that the effect is cold and isolating. Rather than cozy, the furniture ends up looking like it’s floating listlessly around the perimeter of the room without any relationship to the other pieces. Simply pulling one or two pieces in from the walls will dramatically improve the effect. Try placing a chair at an angle to a sofa or positioning a side table between two seating areas to create a conversational circle. You’ll find that your room begins to feel cozier and more inviting almost immediately.
As you practice, pay attention to how pieces of furniture relate to one another. A sofa placed in front of a blank wall will feel static, while a sofa positioned across from another seat will feel like a conversational nook. Try spinning a chair or sliding a table a bit closer to a seating group to see how it affects the room. You’ll be amazed at how quickly the room will begin to suggest its purpose to you. As you work on your furniture layout, the job of the designer becomes clear: to support the function of the room, rather than simply fill the floor plan available.
If you repeat this exercise for a few days in a row, you’ll find that your eye will begin to detect proportion and spacing more easily. It will become easier to tell when two pieces are placed too close together or when a room would benefit from an anchor to ground the space. Rather than trying to decide where things should go, you’ll find yourself making decisions based on what you observe and the small adjustments you make. With a bit of practice, the layout process will stop feeling like a game of musical chairs and will begin to feel more like a meditative process of refining the room into a balanced whole.