Grouping For Impact: The Furniture

Please, please, PLEASE, if I teach you nothing else, don't push all of your furniture up against the walls.  Back before even the days of Trading Spaces, I watched a lovely man named Christopher Lowell on the Discovery channel, I think.  Though I watched all the time, I don't remember anything he did on the show but three things:  He liked to put an uplamp on the floor under a ficus tree, he had a deathly fear of white ceilings ("It looks like a bedsheet draped up there!"), and he advised against putting the furniture up against the walls.  While I don't fully understand the white ceiling thing (to me, it's kind of like the Trading Spaces vendetta against ceiling fans), I completely agree with him on the furniture.  And until I saw him screeching about it, I had my furniture up against the walls.  But once I moved it in a bit, I realized the how proper furniture placement can make even a room with cheap, mismatched furniture look 1000% better.

My partner and I offer a service called a room redesign.  For a flat fee, we will spend about five hours remaking a room with what the client already has.  Then, we leave the client with a decorating plan--colors, shopping ideas, etc.  It hasn't taken off as a concept as much as I'd like, and I can see why.  I mean, most people don't relish the idea of spending $250 and not getting anything new, especially if you think what you have already is ugly.  But I can swear to the fact that the few clients who have made the investment have been completely satisfied with the value of the service.  Just rearranging the furniture and making better use of the decor can result in a transformation that's pretty overwhelming sometimes and leave the room looking like a decorator has been there.  The very first thing we do in a room redesign is rearrange the furniture.

Now, mind you, we're not the Trading Spaces people.  We know that in Texas, you must have a ceiling fan.  We don't pretend that most people don't spend the bulk of their time at home in front of the TV, so we're never going to suggest that a client sacrifice their comfort and the practical uses of the room for style.  That would be silly.  As silly as gluing straw to the walls of a home with children living in it.  But it's possible to arrange the living room furniture so that you can still see the TV from the best vantage points, yet it might look like someone would have an actual conversation in there.  (You don't have to actually do it, but if the room looks like it's arranged for it, it will look better.)  Pull your furniture in from the walls.  Make a circle with it, or a square, or a square that's open on one side (for the TV).  Keep the furniture close enough that, if you were actually having a conversation while sitting on couches, love seats, chairs, etc., you could actually hear each other without shouting.  At first, it will look cramped to you.  That's because you're not used to it.  Unless you have a toddler that needs to practice their tumbling nightly on your living room floor, any more than eight feet of space between two pieces of furniture that are facing each other (or a couch facing the TV) is wasted space.  And wasted space, beyond being a waste, makes the room look cold and impersonal.  Take a look at how our first room redesign client had her furniture arranged:

How was anyone sitting in that rocking chair going to talk to anyone on the couch?  Sign language?  Why do you think most guests congregate in the kitchen?  Because they're closer together and they can talk to each other!    Now look what happens when we bring the furniture in:

You can still lay on either couch and watch TV, but it looks inviting, right?

If you're thinking that your space really only allows for one particular furniture arrangement, you may need a fresh set of eyes to help you.  Invite a friend over for some coffee (or wine) and heavy lifting.  (Put those Moving Men I mentioned in my toolbox post to work, and it's really not difficult.)  That's really what our clients are getting when they pay for a room redesign--that fresh set of eyes to find the new uses and arrangements.

While you (and your drinking buddy) are reassessing the space, consider a different angle, literally.  People tend to have the furniture echo the lines of the walls, and this is not always the most efficient use of space.  Thinking this way is too limiting, but it's something we all fall into.  Remember my living room photos?

Even I, the girl who rearranged my living room every time my husband left town in our last house, couldn't see another potential arrangement in this room.  Our TV was in a built-in niche opposite the couch.  Well, we recently inherited a ginormous TV from my father in law, and it didn't fit in the niche.  There was nowhere else to put it, so I had to rearrange.  I first put it against the window (the one my back was to when I took this photo, moved the couch to where the green chairs are, moved the chaise to where the couch is, and had the green chairs in front of the fireplace (not up against the fireplace, a few feet in.)  This arrangement meant that the very first thing you saw when you walked in my front door was a ginormous TV.  Not the impression a decorator wants to make.  Not to mention the eerie blue light that shone out every one of the windows in the front of my house at night.  So I had to start thinking on the angles instead of the walls.  I had the couch line up with the bar from my kitchen instead, essentially rotating everything about thirty degrees.  I wasn't sure at first if it was awkward, so I made myself live with it for a week.  Now I love it.  And I've gotten tons of compliments on it already.  As with every experiment I suggest, spend a week or two with it, even if you hate it at first.

I never know how to end these posts.  So that's it.  Get to work!