1. Assess the size of your space before you buy anything – The first thing that you need to consider whenever you buy furniture for your house is to find out the dimensions of each room. You’ll be choosing larger (or more furniture) if you have 1,000 square feet to work with vs 800 sqft. You may be able to get an L-shaped sofa, or even a regular width 86-foot sofa with a bigger space. In a smaller apartment you may need to buy loveseats (which are between 64″ – 76″ inches in width) – and accent chairs that are slimmer as you don’t have much room to work with. In this case, an interior design pro – or at least a tape measure – is going to be your biggest ally as you will have to ascertain whether each piece of furniture will fit properly. Be careful of getting anything custom-made as you may not be able to return large pieces (like the 8 ft wide sofas pictured below) if they end up not being able to fit through doorways and elevators. I’ve had customers call me for help after ordering too-big or too-small sofas after falling in love with something in the store and not ascertaining in advance if it will even fit their space. In the end, the store wouldn’t allow them to return as it was past the return date and they dilly-dallied before eventually concluding that it was a too-small piece for their home and calling me to see if I could do anything. So it was a waste of good money as I had to repeat the entire design process for them and they ended up with useless furniture that they had to give away or sell.
2. Work with the height of the space – How high are your ceilings? Many apartments built from the 2000s and onwards tend to have lower ceilings. Architects and builders used to build homes with ceilings of 16 to18 feet or more. These days, you would be lucky to get a home with a ceiling higher than 8 feet, which has become the norm. Sometimes you will come across kitchens with 7 ft high ceilings because the builder decided to drop the ceiling by a foot to accommodate a sprinkler system, recessed lights, or a cooling system. When you have 7- or 8- ft high ceilings, it’s better to have low slung low-slung living and dining room furniture (not higher then 30 inches). And I typically recommend hanging art at slightly below eye level to make it seem like your ceilings are higher off the ground than they really are. Even your paint colours shouldn’t be too dark to avoid making your space feel small. If you look at the living room below, you’ll see that the sofas have very low backs that accentuate the height of the 12 foot ceiling, which is put to good use by hanging this wispy light fixture that looks almost like a work of art. Notice how the dark colours make it feel a bit small though. Choosing lighter-coloured walls would make it feel even bigger.
3. Making sure the objects work together – Whenever you choose furniture for your living room or bedroom, keep in mind that you’re buying not just individual pieces, but coordinating an entire look, much like a woman buys a single item (i.e., shoes, bag or skirt) to complement her entire outfit so that everything is completely coordinated. When you buy an accent chair, keep in mind that you’re not only trying to make sure that it works with once piece of furniture. It should also work with everything else that is in the room. Most people would go crazy trying to coordinate one thing with so many different elements. But if you do want to create a cohesive whole that makes people go ‘wow’, this is the best way to go, such as in the space below. Notice how all the white elements are all coordinated from the bed frame material, nightstands, table lamps, and area rug. You’ll also notice how all the gold accents from the overhead lighting to the nightstand drawer pulls, lamp bases, bed and stool legs are all properly coordinated. And then finally you’ll see the complimentary earth tones, from the dark grey walls, mid-grey curtains to the dark brown wooden floor, which has a golden hue that visually picks up the bling-y elements in the room.
4. Filling vs floating objects in the living room – When you have more space than is necessary, you are then presented with the possibility of putting objects closer to the middle of the room as opposed to putting furniture against the wall. In the living room pictured below for instance, you’ll notice several feet of space between the back of the 2 sofas and the nearest wall. This is possible for larger rooms. In smaller living rooms, people tend to put the living room furniture as close to the wall as possible due to space limitations. Sofas are used sometimes to separate the main conversation (or entertainment area) from the eating area instead of using an actual solid wall as these can divide a space into much smaller areas. And some people prefer to put a fireplace in between 2 sofas like in the example below, while other people may put a TV instead. It’s really up to you what to do with this wall as there’s really no right answer to this one as it will depend on the size and shape of your space.
5. Offsetting weight/bulkiness by using see-through furniture – When you have a home that is on the small side featuring ceilings that are no higher than 8 feet, it’s usually not a bad idea to make your space feel lighter and airier by using furniture that is either transparent or see through like these Hans Wegner mid-century armchairs chairs with the open back and legs pictured below. Together with table that is supported via a single base, your eyes literally see past the furniture making the visual ‘weight’ of the furniture much lighter than if you used a solid & blocky dining table and set of chairs. It also makes it possible to actually see through furniture so that you can see all the way up to the windows and the views beyond. It’s a visual trick often employed by designers to make smaller rooms feel more spacious or to make big pieces of furniture seem almost weightless.
