Laying out your rooms

Laying out Your Rooms

Be Led by the Room

Do not rush into going out to tender. Take time to get the plans and layout as you want them, sit on them, sleep on them, and walk all over them. Once you've agreed on a price with a builder, if you change things, you are at their mercy.

Make sure to layout your furniture before doing the electrical plan so that a switch or an outlet is always within reach.

When laying out a large room it is best to divide it into sections. When laying out your room, bring furniture into the middle of the room instead of relegating everything to the edges. This adds depth and layers to a room; your eye should always be travelling. You can do this by putting lamps on top of tables, or a table or bench behind a sofa. There should always be a table or a surface by a seat to put down a drink.

Be truthful about your lifestyle, and decorate a home according to how you actually live. Don't be dictated by a fireplace: your furniture doesn't have to point towards it. Let a study or a TV room double as a bunk room.

Chairs should be arranged to encourage talking to one another. Furniture does not have to be neatly contained in a room. Let a chair stick out into a hallway so that someone looking down a corridor can see activity instead of an empty room.

Further Reading

For furniture, I recommend:

• Alfies Antique Market
• The Lacquer Company
• Robert Kime
• Woodnutt
• AVW
• Lorfords

Your Assignment

List the furniture you already have, and allocate it provisionally to your rooms. Then roughly sketch where you want to lay your furniture out.

Key Question

Can you recommend a 3D iPad app for a room layout that will help visualise furniture and colour schemes?

Answer

Homestyler Interior Design uses artificial intelligence to allow you to place furniture in a model of your own home or example rooms. It is an excellent app for gaining a better understanding of how a space would function in real life. Sketchup, on the other hand, is a great app that many Interior Designers use. It is compatible with both the iPad and the computer. It is a simple modelling app. Magic Plan is also a good app. It allows you to create plans for your space and use augmented reality to get an idea of how much the work would cost. Finally, Home Design 3D is an excellent app. It is excellent for visualising your space and allowing you to visualise your design.