IDEAS IN ACTIONS

How to do furniture layout of a property?

#interiors #furnishing #Furniture Layout #beautiful house #Creative space #Decorated Spaces #steps for interiors

If you have your property to design a meaningful furniture layout to make everyone happy is always challenging. You should also remember “you cannot make everyone happy. Your time and money is been invested in it, will be always closer to your heart. Furniture layout can be challenging if you like piece of a furniture more than your space you are going to live in. Always respect the space you have been sheltered this will encourage you to be more creative and to explore your living space. Here are few steps we took before we had our loving home decorated with most appropriate furniture available in market. 

 

Newspaper layout:

Even as an growing Architect it’s not easy to understand spaces and dimensions to it’s precision without a measuring tape. To make this simple in our new apartment my husband and me used this newspaper layout technique to make it simple and understanding of spaces though its just 2D it made us easy to understand in circulation patterns. So, What is this newspaper layout technique?  Have the measurements of standard size of furniture available in market eg; sofa (3 seater, 1.8m x 0.9m) , dining table (6 seater, 1.8m x 0.9m), coffee table(rectangle, 1m x 0.6m), tv stand (rectangle, 2m x 0.45m) was our measurements for the space we had. Hence we stitched newspaper with cello tape to the available size. 

This could be little time consuming, don’t spend too much time on this, for us it took 30 min -45min to stitch newspaper for all furniture sizes. Once the newspaper sizes are ready its very simple and quite fun to play around with various layouts, one thing to keep in mind these furniture cannot be stuck to each other, should have circulation space for it’s functionality. This also helps us understand if we can alter the dimensions of the furniture depending on the layouts and our priority

eg: we spent lot of time finding the right sofa but most of our socializing happens on dining area this is because it’s close to the entrance/ kitchen this is the most active zone in the house, sofa is used only for watching TV alone so our corner L-shape sofa is only for family and less for guests.    

Circulation: 

This is very crucial to follow Newspaper Layout Techniques, simple straight line layouts are always effective and more productive (usage of space) than complicated layouts. Circulation is all about accessibility to multiple things, but still being meaningful. To have a successful circulation pattern you need to understand your zones or activities carefully. In a one single space these zones can be physically or physiologically separated. The few things to remember while you are deciding the circulation.

1.     Door to door distance to be accessed with less time, ( you can calculate this by timing your-self after done the arrangements with Newspaper layout).

2.     Access to several activities without any interruptions or obstructions. 

Eg: kitchen to dining access to be more quick than kitchen to living, this seams quite obvious but it can be over looked in some of the designs.  

 

Material or colour selection:

This is subjective according to personal taste, for us it’s was more of having a longevity so we selected all original materials like leather and solid wood. We wanted to keep our interiors as simple as possible so I was intending to use only 2 colours/ materials but it became 3 due to several circumstances. So at this situations we have selected the 3^rd colour is a neutral colour shade this doesn’t take too much of attentions from other main furniture. We have faced this situation, where we have introduced the third colour for our dining chairs to neutral. Whereas, our main furniture like dining table, coffee table, TV stand have our original material theme. The other soft furniture also have our original theme but they are less highlighted since they are little different colour than expected. 

 

Decorations:

#paintings # art-piece #Artifacts #decorating mirrors

Designing furniture to a space is more a functionality, this creates an identity. Visual decorations like painting, pictures, Arts adds indigenous value to the space. This can be followed in many different ways. I have a formula to two ways, is reciprocative for the above methods material or colour selection:

1.     Simple: use one of the colours from one of the colour selection.

2.     Interesting: using highlighted colours for these decorative items.

 

Storage requirements:

Storage this is a basic requirement which can never be fulfilled no matter how many storages you have. When we were designing the space we were just a couple and now we are going to have our 2^nd kid and obviously we don’t have enough storage. Storage is always a growing requirement, it could be hard to decide at initial stages of designing furniture. Though we got most of our furniture is with the storage it still a shortage after five years. We did think ahead but not far ahead enough. At the time of design we were in the presumption off “more storage is equal to more junk”.

Dose designing or decorating you house ends after furnishing or decorating? 

                       NO! 

There is always something missing. It’s a never ending process till you live in same house or till you stop visiting your friend’s and family’s houses.