Furniture Arrangement: How to Choose the Right Furnishing

You are now halfway there to designing your extraordinary room. We were talking about how to start your room decoration recently. If you haven’t read that yet, I highly recommend you read it.

Do you know why?

This is a process that you need to follow step-by-step to achieve the best results.

You won’t be able to find the right furniture if you don’t know your room sizes.

If you haven’t decided on your color scheme yet, you cannot decide when you go shopping for your couch or rug or anything else.

Do you know what the worst thing is? You bought the furniture you love, and when you get home, the piece you love looks entirely out of place in your room.

Your valuable time and money cannot be wasted like that. Here is your guide to saving your money and time by explaining perfect home decor ideas.

You will learn concrete tips for the right size of these furnishings for your space and home:

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Rug Placement

I am a believer that nearly every room should have a rug (not necessarily in the kitchen). No matter what type of flooring you have, the rug will always improve the room.

Do you know why? Because the rug is like an invisible wall to help us define zones in a room.

There are three things to consider when you are going to buy a rug: size, color, and material.

The size depends on your home, but you can find a unique measurement for your home if you know how to use a rug.

I think a rug looks best for the living room when all of the legs of your main seatings are entirely on the rug, or only the front legs of the furniture are on the rug.

If you don’t put any legs on a rug, it will look like floating, so be careful with that. 

For bedrooms, placing the rug under a bed is the best and easiest solution. You can set part of the rug under the bed (so a little more than half is under the bed). Less than half of the rug is on the floor at the end of the bed (extend the bottom). 

For the dining room, ensure that your rug will extend at least 2-feet (60cm) out all four sides of the table. Just measure your table and add 2-feet to each dimension.

Don’t forget to match your rug with the shape of your room. If its square, then go with a square shape rug.

When deciding the colors and material for a rug, try to use your accent colors for the right rug selection and texture, which is harmonious with your style.

Look at the difference between these two photos. The room without a rug looks unfinished. The one with the correctly used carpet is warm and homey.

Furniture Details: 2 Steps to Select the Right Furniture

You can choose the right furniture in every type of room keeping these two ideas in mind: functionality and size.

Step1 is the functionality.

Let’s discuss functionality room by room.

For a living room, to select the optimal furniture, you need to consider the activities you will do most in this room.

You must have furniture pieces that will meet your needs based on your activities.

If you want your living room to be a place to talk and entertain, ensure you have plenty of seating. Besides seating, you need some basic elements like a coffee table, side tables, and console tables.

You obviously need a dining table for a dining room, but you should also consider including a buffet or server, a console table, or even a bookcase.

For a bedroom, obviously, need a bed, you will need one or two nightstands, a dresser, and a side chair with a side table.

It would be best to decide on the activities before you begin shopping for furniture. You need to pick your furniture to meet your needs based on how you will use the rooms. 

Step 2 is the size.

I think most people get it wrong. They don’t buy the right sized furniture for their space, and they end up with a room that looks too crowded. But now that you know you need to measure your room first, you will never make this mistake again.

Consider all the primary passageways into and throughout the room and think of them as a corridor. 

You want at least 3 feet (91cm) distance between hallways and furnishing.

For a gap between the coffee table and sofa (as a secondary passageway), I recommend leaving at least 1.5 feet (45 cm). 

Do rough measurements, so you at least have the maximum size of the furnishings you can use in that room. Knowing the measurements of your rooms will help you visualize what furniture will best fit in those spaces.

The main point for a dining room is leaving about 3 feet (91 cm) of empty space behind the chairs. Now you know your sizes.

Here comes the fun part: finding your furniture pieces.

There are lots of great places to shop for furniture, but I recommend doing as much as you can online.

Why? First, you can view a lot of pieces in a short amount of time, and you don’t have to drive from store to store.

Secondly, online is a great way to narrow down your choices by your requirements. It allows you to enter the measurements of the pieces that you are looking for (most online websites have filters in search).

Places like wayfair.com and hayneedle.com are great sites to look at because of the massive variety of styles and price points.

Lighting Ideas

We discussed some significant elements to take steps towards success. 🙂

However, successful decoration doesn’t happen without the details. What makes excellent design are the details.

Don’t worry, I have made it easy for you. Your room will start to look like a cover in a magazine after you include these next elements.

Lighting is a critical design element that makes all the difference in a room.

Lots of us use just one significant light or maybe a couple of table lamps to meet all of our lighting needs. Honestly, we are missing out on the opportunity to add some serious drama to a room.

The first rule you need to know is to always have different layers of lighting. What I mean is that every room should have three layers of light:

Ambient Lighting

It is a significant piece of lighting in a room. Two examples are a chandelier hung in the middle of your space or maybe light from a ceiling fan.

Task Lighting

Task lighting means that you need lighting for specific tasks that you do in that room. Let’s say you love reading in bed, then you need reading lights beside your bed.

Table lamps, floor lamps, and arm lamps are examples of task lighting.

Accent Lighting

Finally, add some accent light to emphasize things that you love in that room, but not everything you like.

Hypothetically, you have plants in your space or some artwork (maybe your family photographs) to use accent lighting to emphasize.

Try to use these different kinds of lighting in a room.

Aim to have 3-5 various light sources in a standard size room. Spread them throughout the room to avoid dark areas or corners.

You can say that’s a lot of lighting, but you don’t need to use them simultaneously. It ensures that you will always have enough light so you don’t strain your eyes.

Here are some visuals which can help explain these ideas. Pictures below from left to right: ambient lighting, task lighting, accent lighting.

How to Choose an Ideal Window Covering

To me, the room doesn’t look finished without window coverings. Windows will look naked. 🙂

Coverings are both aesthetic and functional.

It provides warmth in the winter by helping to hold the heat inside and keeping a space cooler in the summer by blocking the sunlight.

The most common types of window coverings are curtains or drapes, blinds, shades, and shutters.

With all of these choices, what type of window covering should you use?

To narrow down your choices, I recommend considering what style you have chosen for your home first.

It would be great for a color choice to use darker or lighter shades of your neutrals or choose one of your accent colors.

You can use the same color as your wall for your drapes, but I like to provide some contrast unless it is not a small room (remember that light colors help a small space to feel larger).

Hang the curtains as high and wide as you can, 4-5 inches (10-12 cm) from the ceiling, and extend 12-18 inches (30-45 cm) on each side of the window. This makes your windows look larger than they are.

Make sure that the drapes hit the floor at precisely the right point before you hang them on your drapery rod. Here are some other tips:

1. 1. Always ensure that your curtains or drapes hit the ground. Your curtains can even pool on the floor by a couple of inches if you want.
   2. Window coverings do not have to match throughout the house, but they should be complimentary.
   3. For shades and drapes, consider a room darkening liner.

These are the basic things that you need to remember when you are going to buy window coverings. It’s not that complicated to have ideal covers when you know these tricks.

How to Add some Accessories and Greenery 

This is the final step for designing a room; you have completed all the essential things.

Think of the whole process as if you’re preparing a model for a fashion show. You selected the clothing, and now you are satisfied. The next thing you are going to do is choose the jewelry.

Accessories and greenery really elevate any space and give a room great character. Accessories can come from items you have collected over the years.

Try to make sure that some of the accessories in your room contain accent colors chosen for that room.

Don’t make it too complicated by using all of the accessories you have. If you don’t do that, then your room will look great and be personalized.

If you need tips to accessorize your room, you can check on these lessons to be a home accessory expert.

I ALWAYS include greenery in a room. It is one of the main things that people skip, but it creates a big difference. If you say it is challenging to take care of plants, then you can buy fake ones.  

It doesn’t matter it is real or fake; greenery adds instant warmth to a room. Find an empty corner and add some greenery (symmetrical edges will be great for this task).

You are now on the way to decorating your home and preventing any mistakes or failures. You will be confident to go shopping to redecorate your home after considering these steps. 

PS: It will be beneficial to you if you take some notes while you are reading this. 

That is it! I hope you enjoy what you are reading and ask any questions you have or add a comment below. I am happy to hear from you! 🙂