Furnishing a Room
In all successful rooms, the groups of furnishings have a purpose, related to the function of the room. You can make good use of your space and create a friendly and inviting interior by knowing how to combine and arrange the elements in your room. Before one piece of furniture is bought or placed, you should make a “room plan.” This is the first step toward achieving a livable home. Gone are the days when furniture collected like leftovers in the icebox; equally outmoded is the time when furniture was placed around the walls, as was done in the formal drawing rooms of the eighteenth century and is done now with public benches in a waiting room.
The Mystery of Interior Decoration
A great deal of mystery surrounds the subject of interior decoration. Almost everyone believes you have to be an expert designer or a talented artist in order to furnish a room with distinction and charm. This is not true. Of course, there is a certain amount of knowledge that is helpful. But a few basic rules should enable you to be your own decorator and give you confidence in yourself.
Making a Room Plan
Before you start furnishing a new room from scratch or rearranging an old one, draw a floor plan of the room on graph paper. Each 1/4-inch square should represent 1 square foot. Now draw “templates,” or form models, of your basic furniture pieces to the same scale: 1/4 inch equals 1 foot. Cut out these templates and use them for arranging your furniture groups on the paper floor plan. Be sure that your plan includes window and door openings, electric-light outlets, radiators, fireplace, and any other architectural details that will affect your placing of the furniture. The floor plan of the living room illustrated will show you how to indicate all these essentials.
If you have old pieces of furniture in your room which you want to use, be sure to measure them accurately. Then cut your templates to fit their measurements. This is the way decorators work in planning a room.
Furnishing a Room
In all successful rooms, the groups of furnishings have a purpose, related to the function of the room. You can make good use of your space and create a friendly and inviting interior by knowing how to combine and arrange the elements in your room. Before one piece of furniture is bought or placed, you should make a “room plan.” This is the first step toward achieving a livable home. Gone are the days when furniture collected like leftovers in the icebox; equally outmoded is the time when furniture was placed around the walls, as was done in the formal drawing rooms of the eighteenth century and is done now with public benches in a waiting room.
Balance
Balance in room planning means the proper distribution of weight and the best use of space. Good balance ensures the comfort and convenience of the persons using the room. Never overcrowd a living room with big pieces so that it is difficult to move around. This makes people uncomfortable and restless. Place furniture in natural conversation groups.
For example, if you have a large piece of furniture on one wall with nothing of similar bulk to balance it on the opposite wall, two pieces of furniture can be made to do the trick. A sofa on a long wall, for instance, may be balanced by a pair of armchairs with a table between them. A room that is well balanced will have conversation groups, reading groups, a desk or game or music group, and open traffic lanes.
Planning Your Room
Now consider an average living room, 14 by 10 feet, with a fireplace in the center of one long wall flanked by two windows. The opposite long wall is broken by an entrance arch at the side. At one narrow end of the room is a bay window or a picture window; at the other, a pair of French doors leading to a porch.
First you want a focal point, a dramatic center of interest. This can be a group around the fireplace, at the picture or bay window, or along the unbroken wall of the room. For the fireplace, you might select a pair of comfortable fireside chairs or a love seat and a wing chair or a man-sized and a smaller sized lounge chair. Flank these with side tables and good-sized lamps, and you have a center of interest.
On the long wall opposite the fireplace, place a sofa group including a coffee table, two end tables, and matching reading lamps. End tables should be the same height as the arms of the sofa or chairs they are to complement.
Now how do you treat the two ends of the room? For the bay or picture window plan to have a drum table or drop-leaf table with a pair of occasional armchairs. These open armchairs may be drawn up to
Good Taste in Decoration
Furnishings guided by good taste. When a stranger looks at your living room for the first time and exclaims, “What a beautiful room!” he simply means that the selection and arrangement of everything in the room is in good taste, that the principles of decoration have been successfully applied.
The elements, or basic principles, of good decoration are five in number. No one of them comes first or is more important than any other. They are Scale, Balance, Comfort, Pattern, and Color. Each one of these factors plays a vital part in the decorating process.
Scale
Scale is the art of using things of the right size for the space they are to occupy, for the use they are to have, and for the persons who are to use them. Not only should the details of the room be in correct proportion to the size of the room, but they should be in proper relationship and proportion to each other.
For example, large pieces of furniture are unsuitable in a small room. The opposite is also true; small-scale objects in a large room look insignificant and do not enhance the composition. Have you ever seen a small dining room crowded with a twelve-piece dining set? Some ambitious salesman has oversold his customer, and it takes a shoehorn to get the guests in and out. Or have you seen a large, handsome sofa flanked by two diminutive end tables and short, squatty lamps? Here is another glaring example of bad scale. The sofa demands important end tables and tall lamps, both in the interests of correct scale and adequate lighting. Most of these basic principles are nothing more than common sense applied against the background of daily living.
Balance
Balance in room planning means the proper distribution of weight and the best use of space. Good balance ensures the comfort and convenience of the persons using the room. Never overcrowd a living room with big pieces so that it is difficult to move around. This makes people uncomfortable and restless. Place furniture in natural conversation groups.