Interior Design Ideas
Home Decorating Ideas & Resources
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SPACE PLANNING 101
A scaled floor plan is like a map - it shows where you're going and how to get there. With a good floor plan, you'll know the right sizes of furniture to purchase, and where to put any existing pieces that you already have. You'll know how to place the furniture for maximum usage and comfort with a pleasing sense of order. So how do you create this masterpiece of space usage? If you want to do it yourself, there are some basic bits of information that will help you on your way. You'll need to know average sizes of furniture, human scale, and space allowances - such as the right amount of space for walkways and movement of dining chairs. Then you must decide what furniture goes into this room, and the appropriate scale and proportion of the furnishings.
Before you can begin with the tangibles, your first challenge will be to think through your own needs, wants and ideas for the room, as well as how you will be using it. Ask yourself these questions to start:
Once you've gathered your thoughts, you can start on the actual plan. Make a list of everything you'd ideally want in this room. Measure all the furniture you have already that's going to be used here. Decide what else is needed to fulfill your desired functions. Use the following guide for general furniture sizes. Then start playing on paper. It's much easier to draw or move around pieces of paper than large pieces of furniture - it's almost like a jigsaw puzzle.
A floor plan is like a map of your room. Think of yourself as floating on the ceiling looking down on your room. You'll see everything from the top only - two dimensionally (width and depth), with no height shown. The point is to fit everything you want and need into the space with the proper room left over. And remember to make it flow well and look great too! If you haven't done this before, the easiest way to draw a floor plan is to use grid paper. You can purchase paper that has been printed with intersecting lines creating 1/4" squares at an art supply or office supply store. Each 1/4" square will represent one square foot. This is called quarter-inch scale and is noted 1/4" = 1'. It's the most common scale used for floor plans. First, draw the room dimensions, dividing the number of feet into the correct number of grids. For example, a simple rectangular room 12' x 15' will be shown as a box 12 squares wide by 15 squares long. You will also need to show doorways, windows, and anything else that will need to be taken into consideration. You may want to make several copies of your plan so that you can work freely and create different options. Your next step is to put furniture into your room. One way is to draw the furniture directly onto the plan, just as you did the room itself. For example, a sofa 3' deep by 7' long (a pretty typical size), will be a rectangle 3 boxes by 7 boxes. Or, if you want to play around a bit more, cut out pieces from another piece of grid paper representing the size of the furniture (you may want to mark these pieces with the name of the piece of furniture so you can keep track of everything). You can then easily rearrange all the little pieces of paper furniture and see how the room could look with different configurations. Think about how you'd like to use the room, where you'd like to sit, or where the bed will fit the best, or how well the dining table fits in the center of the room, and all the other uses of the space. When you find a plan you like, you can trace these pieces or tape or glue them on in place. Remember that even though you're not drawing in the third dimension (height), it still must be accounted for. For instance, you're not going to want to put a tall cabinet in front of a window. Another way of drawing floor plans is to use a software program to create the space. Usually these programs include some furniture sizes and also can show elevations and 3-D renderings of the room to give you a general idea of what the space will look like. If the program you're using doesn't have the sizes of the furniture that you want to use, you can leave space in the plan and draw the needed pieces in by hand after you've printed your computer plan.
Furniture and people come in a range of sizes, but not that much of a range. Furniture is made in similar sizes by every manufacturer, because these are the sizes that are comfortable to people and the sizes that we're all used to. For instance, you'll notice that when you sit at any dining table, it feels about the same height as any other, and it doesn't matter how tall you are. However, you'll still want the scale and proportion of the furniture to fit both you and the room - within reason. You may move to another home later and will want your furniture to fit properly there too. And sometimes, averages must be thrown out the window, as in the case of a very tall family who wants extra high cabinets in the kitchen (however, don't forget about re-sale issues!). But, in general, there are size averages to work with and you can figure these averages into any plan. If you need a very particular size for a difficult space, custom furniture is always a viable option. There are a lot of variations in furniture sizes, but it helps to have some basic ideas when planning things. Here are some very general size ranges of furniture, all shown in inches:
After all this work to create a floor plan, you've just completed the first step in designing your room. Once everything is planned to scale and proportion, what follows is selecting and coordinating all the furnishings that make an interior come alive - the right furniture, flooring or rugs, colors, fabrics, patterns and textures, window and wall treatments, accessories, art, and the many finishing touches. You can have fun doing it all yourself. Or, if you're one of the many people who don't have the time, energy, or creativity yourself to put everything together - and yet you appreciate beautiful interiors - consider hiring a professional interior designer to help. |
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