HOW TO DETERMINE THE PERFECT FURNITURE LAYOUT WITHOUT THE HEAVY LIFTING

I typically have a pretty good eye when it comes to arranging furniture in a room.  I usually can come up with a layout by spending some time looking at the space and thinking about my furniture.  Even if I do not quite get it perfect the first time, I usually only need to make a few adjustments.

MY LONG NARROW LIVING ROOM

Original Living Room Furniture Layout before settling on the perfect arrangement

When it came to determining how I would arrange my living room, I really struggled.  The room is long and narrow with two entrances and three full size windows.  While I did come up with a layout that was ok, I just was not in love with the way the room looked.  The room, in my mind, did not have a good balance.  It felt heavy on the right and light on the left.  And while I love my piano, I felt it was too prominent in the room.  But the thing that bothered me the most was that the gorgeous sofa that I custom designed was not featured in the room.

When I decided to move furniture in the other rooms, I usually had to move a sofa or love seat slightly.  These pieces were not too heavy to move with the help of my husband.  My living room, however, had some really heavy furniture pieces, like an upright piano and a marble top buffet that we did not want to move.

ONLINE RESOURCES TO THE RESCUE (NOT QUITE)

So I needed a backup plan to determine the perfect furniture arrangement if I did not want to find myself moving all my furniture around multiple times.  I started by looking on Redfin and Zillow at other houses in my neighborhood with a similar floor plan hoping I would get some ideas.  Unfortunately I did not.  In fact during my search for the perfect layout, I also realized how many people do not seem to know where to even begin when it comes to arranging furniture.

So my plan B was to look for room layout suggestions on Pinterest.  This again was not very helpful.  Most of the pins were for a very basic room that is more conducive to arranging furniture.

Pinterest did suggest that I use graph paper to draw out different suggestions and so I tried that next.  While it did assist with coming up with some different ideas for arranging the furniture, boxes on graph paper do not really bring the look to life and I still could not decide which one I wanted to go with.

DISCOVERING AND FALLING IN LOVE WITH ROOMSTYLER

So I did some searching online and found a website called Roomstyler, which lets you sign up for free to create 3D renders of interiors you design.  With Roomstyler I could try every furniture layout I had drawn out and then see 3D renderings of it from every angle.  The program has a few options for furniture, paint colors, flooring, and decor.  While the furniture was not an exact match to my own, I felt I was able to get a good idea of what my room would look like when it was completely done.  The other great thing about Roomstyler is that it has a camera which lets you see the room from any perspective point in the room.

To start, you build a layout.  This requires you to measure your room, but trust me that bit of effort is totally worth it.  I dragged and dropped the rectangular shape on the work area.  Next I measured the length and width of my living room and then edited the dimensions in the program so that they matched the measurements of my living room.  Next I measured the dimensions of the two openings into the room (I have one from the front hall and one from the dining room) and how far the edges of those openings are from the other walls.  If you click on the doors tab there are different door options including an “opening” option.  I clicked on that and dragged it to the spot I wanted it to be in the room.  You can then change the measurements of the opening to match the ones in your room.  I then did the same thing to add the windows to the room layout.  Finally I clicked on the paint brush to pick a paint color for the walls.  And there you have it; a floor plan so that you can start trying different furniture arrangements.

DECORATING YOUR ROOM WITH FURNITURE AND DECOR

A 3D view of the room from my front hall

Above is a 3D view of my living room from the perspective of standing in my front hall.  Go back and look at the picture of the real room above and you will see they match pretty well.  From here it was time to start selecting furniture and decor for my room.  You will see below that there are a lot of options for decorating the room.

Furniture and decor can be found by category or you can use the search bar to find something specific.  As I was using this program to figure out how to arrange my furniture, I decided that I also needed to filter by dimensions when picking out the furniture so I was sure these arrangements would actually work in my room.

Once I had all the items selected I began placing everything in the room trying all the arrangements that I had laid out on graph paper.  The most time-consuming piece for me was picking out all the furniture, so once I had all of that selected it was really easy to move it all around.  I ended up trying 10+ arrangements this way.

A 2D view of my favorite living room layout

While there were a few arrangements that I liked, I was lucky that one really jumped out to me as my favorite arrangement.  I used the camera to view it from multiple vantage points in the room, showed my husband these pictures and we both agreed this look was perfect for our living room (and he appreciated that each arrangement could be tested without moving furniture multiple times!).

The 3D view of my favorite living room layout.

After you have finished designing your room you can take a 3D photo which helps bring the room to life even more.  Look how realistic this looks.  So when my husband and I finally had a minute on the weekend we moved all the furniture to this arrangement and I have to say I could not be happier with the result!

The final design and layout of my living room furniture.

Have you struggled to come up with the perfect floor plan?  Would you try Roomstyler to help you style your home?