How To Arrange Furniture
As a rule, when arranging space, cluster gathering areas-the most public functions- near the entrance, and confine retreats- the more intimate spaces- to more naturally secluded areas. Along the way, mark the progression from public to private with a series of small spots to pause, relax, and talk. In creating both communal and private places, keep the following in mind:
Find the heart. In older homes, the hearth was the heart-the place where meals were prepared and feet were warmed. Your home may not have such an obvious center, but to be really alive, it needs a heart. Pick a natural convergence point-in theory the living room, but more probably, the kitchen, the bedroom (especially for those who work long hours), or wherever the TV lives. Then orient subsidiary spaces around it.
Look at the sun. In choosing the varied identities of different spaces, look at the sun. Natural light is one of the most compelling elements of any design, and your scheme should work with it. This means that if the so-called living room gets great sunsets, maybe it should really be the place you have dinner so you get to enjoy it.
Don’t overlook halls and stairs. More than just ways to get from one space to another, halls and stairs can be places in themselves and deserve as much thought as the rest of the house, especially if they are the first places to be seen. Make halls welcoming. Provide places for mail, gloves, or even a chair that lets you take your shoes off.
Look outside. Little spaces, such as a foyer, porch, or a few feet of ground out bak, are worthy of as much consideration as your rooms. A spot under a tree or a place to put a table and two chairs can become extensions of your living area.
How to Arrange Furniture
Like a writer’s outline, the furniture arrangement blocks out the major points of a room’s design. It specifies what should take place where—knitting here, carousing there. As with writing, the only unforgivable error is not to decide what is important. At home, the symptom is sticking furniture along the room’s perimeter in the misguided belief that such an arrangement will provide the most space. On the contrary, jump in. To design is to play, to try things out, to take risks. Use the following guidelines as an excuse to experiment. Live with it for a couple of days. If you don’t like it, move it. (Just make sure you put a thick towel under the heavy pieces so that they are easier to move and won’t scratch the floor.)
Listen to your room. Living spaces are almost always designed with a furniture layout in mind. Take a moment to survey the space. Look for clues. Many bedrooms are made with one wall that seems to be precisely a bed’s width. Living areas are often conceived with ideal seating arrangements grouped around the principle focus, leaving room for people to pass without bumping into the furniture. Light fixtures also give hints about what to place below them. Two sconces on one wall probably flanked a significant piece of furniture. A hanging lamp in the dining room is a good indicator of where the table’s center was envisioned. At the same time, recognize that some layouts are better than others. Just because the dining table was meant to be in the corner doesn’t mean it needs to stay there. But it’s a good place to start.
Find a focus. Just as every house has one heart, every room has its strongest feature. It may be a fireplace, a good view, or even a favorite photograph. Ask yourself, “What is the most important element?” and then build your seating arrangements around it.
Make a sitting circle. Well-placed furniture brings people together. Start with the largest pieces, like the sofa. Cluster additional chairs in a well-defined area with paths running past, not cutting through, the groupings. Leave 18 inches between a sofa and a coffee table and three feet for any place you want to walk. Add a few too many chairs. If you have room, create secondary seating arrangements. This may just mean a comfy chair by a window. The goal is to give you and your guests many different places to sit.
Keep the groupings balanced but not rigidly symmetrical. Gather around like a bonfire rather than across like a job interview. Likewise, choose similar but not necessarily identical chairs. Pay attention also to the scale of the pieces. We all want big cushy couches to settle into. But big is relative. Comfort comes from the seating’s arrangement, not from its size. You will spend as much time walking around your living space as sitting in one spot, so make it easy to navigate. Avoid furniture obstacle courses that force you to cut around armoires and past couches to follow your daily routines. Remember: The movement through rooms is as important as the rooms themselves.
Aim for a perfect dining room. Like a great place to sit, a great place to eat fosters intimacy. Consequently, more important than the chairs, even the room, is the table. In Italy’s Garfagnana area, furniture and food are actually united. The traditional meal in this secluded mountain region is polenta spread over a dining surface with a whole in the middle (of the polenda) to hold sausages. Diners start at the table’s edge and work their way inward, finally earning the right to devour the meat.
In your home, a table that is 36 inches wide allows enough roof for the plates and glasses but still keeps you close. Narrower (but no less than 30 inches) can be even better. Just make sure you have plenty of places near the table on which to put platters, dishes and extra drinks. Tight spacing between chairs also helps. Allow 18 inches of table length for each person. To keep people near enough to really see each other, do not allow for much more. And to bring them even closer, keep the centerpiece low and mak a pool of light in the middle.
Define space without walls. We all want homes that are open and cozy. Much of this can be accomplished without resorting to major construction. The key is to play with the stuff you’ve got. Reinforce the major sitting areas with light or rugs. Be sensitive to the big impact small height changes can have. Seated at a dining table, for example, we can easily see over two-foot-high piece of furniture and remain connected to the surrounding spaces. On the other hand, a three-foot-high piece, such as a sideboard, defines a perimeter so that even in a large room, the dining table will now become the dining area. Use a screen or a bookcase to raise the edge another two feet, to slightly more than half the height of the average ceiling, and we will no longer be able to see beyond where we are sitting. The dining area will then become a dining room within a room.
This strategy is especially effective in creating small retreats inside larger rooms. For instance, a single chair, no matter how well padded, can look lonely in a big space. To make it more inviting, pair that armchair with an adjustable lamp, a side table, and perhaps even a small rug. Nestle this grouping next to a window and, presto, you have a place to get away.
Create a restful bedroom To make a bedroom feel more like a retreat, try to avoid placing the bed in your line of sight as you enter the room. Many bedrooms are designed for this major piece of furniture to lie against the entrance wall. With the head of the bed against the back of the room, the sleeper faces away from the house. Some experts, notably respected theorist Christopher Alexander, go even further and recommend that we sleep facing east. In order to avoid interruption of your REM sleep (approximately 60 to 100 minutes after one falls asleep, at which point rapid eye movement occurs) and to insure a good morning mood, he says we need to be awakened by the rising sun.
Beware of Feng Shui. Listening to your rooms should not be confused with feng shui, the Chinese art of placement. You don’t have to rely on your furniture placement for enlightenment. Aim for contentment instead.
Excerpted from Living in Style without Losing your Mind, by Marco Pasanella