Furniture and accessory placement

How to place furniture and accessories is a very common problem in design. It’s all about the nuance of balance and the play of light – designers have an innate eye and the spatial understanding of these elements which most people don’t possess. Hence the comment from many people “I wouldn’t of thought of doing that!”

The first aspect to assess is whether the pieces you have are actually appropriate for the room. If the scale isn’t right there’s not much you can do about placement to overcome that.

There is however ways you can work to place your furniture that make for both a more aesthetically pleasing and a better functioning room.

In a club setting which is more formal, chairs look best positioned square to a coffee table, but the shape of the chairs have to be right for that to work, too. In a less formal setting, playing with the placement of chairs to give the room a more casual feel may work best.

Consider the placement of your furniture like paint on a canvas. Scale is very important, so smaller rooms look best with smaller scaled furniture. If for example you try to squeeze in a huge modular lounge suite into such a small space it just doesn’t work. If you have a large lounge setting like a modular, it has to have space around it for balance, otherwise you have a room completely overwhelmed by one piece of furniture.

Rugs are a great anchor in a room and you may choose either to have all the furniture sitting on the rug, the furniture sitting to the edge of the rug, or some pieces off and some on. There are no hard and fast rules here – consider the overall look of the room and what works best.

In the finer details, the same concept applies. You’re painting a picture with  the accessories, it’s a display often for no other function than aesthetics. You need high and low points, you may be working with shades of one colour or a variety, and this all comes down to personal style and taste. Even for the experts it takes time to get this right.

As a general pointer, you need to think about space and how to use it well.

Cheers,

Beadles