Interior designer Bobbie Snow O'Neill shows how to arrange furniture to its best advantage without an aching back.
- Measure all pieces of furniture exactly.
- Take inventory to determine what you have as well as what you want to use in your new room setting.
- Make a graph: Using quarter-inch-scale graph paper, make a floor plan of the room. Then, using the furniture measurements you took earlier, make a paper template of each piece. Roll small pieces of tape and put one on the back of each template. Now you can move the templates around to find the best arrangement before you move a single piece.
- When you're planning the arrangement of a room, take into consideration such things as traffic flow, use of the area, and the number of people who will be using the room.
- To move heavy furniture by yourself, if you don't have access to a furniture dolly, slip a piece of heavy fabric or Turkish towel under the legs and use it to pull the furniture.
- Avoid having pieces of furniture "floating," or sitting by themselves away from a wall. If, for instance, the sofa is floating in front of the fireplace, anchor it by placing a console table behind it. Leave the table free of tall accessories such as flower arrangements, which would work better as fillers, beside an armchair, for example.
- When placing a cocktail table in front of a sofa, allow plenty of room between the two, generally 12- to 16-inches.
- Before you buy new accessories for a room, first determine the arrangement of furniture so you have a clear picture of what you need to buy.
