The Importance of Space Planning

Answer 1

Before you start throwing paint and furniture around your home, you should really take a moment to think about space planning. Without proper space planning, you'll only wind up making your home borderline uninhabitable due to crowding or just plain clumsy layout. Here are a few tips to make the most of all the space in your home.

Shop Smart

When buying furniture, you should be careful not to buy anything that barely fits in your home in the first place. A king size bed in a small guest room, for instance, simply isn't going to work no matter how well you try and arrange everything. Luckily, you can fit a queen size bed where a king size won't go, and you can always use love seats where you might have used a sofa in a larger home. Just be realistic and know how much room you have to work with. When in doubt, keeping a tape measurer handy can't hurt.

Space vs. The Illusion of Space

Sometimes, creating the illusion of space can be just as effective as actually opening up some space. There are a lot of good tricks to create the feeling of a room being larger than it is. For instance, hanging large mirrors up is an old trick to expand a room. Keeping your furniture closer to the walls is another standard trick.

Preserve the Floorspace

Make sure that everyone in your home can walk easily from one corner of the room to the other. If you can't get through the bedroom without tripping over the dresser, well, that's exactly the kind of problem that space planning is meant to correct.

Wall Mounted Shelves

Shelves can be a huge help in cleaning up your floor space. You don't need a whole book shelf if you can fit your favorite books on a wall mounted shelf and keep the rest in a closet. It's all about freeing up floor space so that you can move more easily around your home.