Tips for Creating Floor Plans
Your boxes are packed, the moving van is loaded, you have your family in tow and it’s time to move! Whether you are settling into a new apartment or house, the feeling of starting from scratch and the freedom to plan and design a new space with endless possibilities is refreshing and exciting! Before you tear open those boxes and begin to unpack all your belongings, it’s important to consider exactly how you plan on organizing and arranging your new home. You’ve gotten rid of your old clutter and you’re starting over. You want to make sure you’re not going from one cluttered home to another. To avoid this, you want to create a floor plan in order for you and your family to live comfortably and happily after relocating for years to come. Consider these helpful tips for creating a floor plan that will make you love your new home even more!
Measure Your New Space
The house or apartment you are moving into will not have the same dimensions as your prior residence. You may have planned to simply plop your furniture on the floors of your new home just as you did in your old home, but that might not be a possibility. This is why having a tape measure on hand after moving in will be a good idea. Measuring the rooms you are planning for may be time-consuming, but will be beneficial in laying out your furniture efficiently later on. Use your tape measure to determine the length and width of the room from corner to corner. It’s also a good idea to figure out the halfway point of each wall in the room. This way when you arrange your furniture, you’ll have an idea of where to place them proportionately.
Sketch Out Your Floor Plan and Sketch Again
It’s difficult to imagine exactly how your room will look and distinguish one idea from another. It’s a better idea to grab a pencil and some graph paper to sketch it out. Once you’ve taken all your measurements, scale and draw the boundaries of the room. Don’t forget to include the halfway points on each wall, as well as any doorways, windows, fireplaces or any other built-in fixtures. Doing this will help you avoid placing furniture in front of anything you don’t want to cover or facing something you don’t want it to. For example, computers or televisions should be kept from facing windows to prevent glares. Make copies of your sketch so that you can plan several ideas with various furniture layouts. If you want to skip the paper and pencil, there are numerous apps you can utilize to layout your floor plan as well. These visual apps allow you to enter in your dimensions or even take a live video of the room to generate measurements for you and design your floor plan digitally. Taking advantage of these apps can make your project easier and faster.
Think About Pathways
If you’re moving a family with children, being mindful of pathways when creating your open floor plan is critical. Think about where the most natural foot traffic will be to make enough floor space between furniture for your family or visitors to walk through comfortably without obstruction. A good rule-of-thumb is to keep 3 feet of clearance space in front of doorways or stairs for ease of circulation from room to room. In rooms such as offices and bedrooms, you also want to think about the space in front of drawers, cabinets, and desks. Make sure there is ample space to extend and access these pieces of furniture fully.
Furniture Layout Ideas
If you’re having trouble thinking of ways to arrange your floor plan layout, a good start could be to ask yourself, “What is the focus of the room?” Answering this simple question will help you determine the main feature of the room that the rest of your furniture should be arranged around. In your living room, this could be the fireplace, a television or a large painting. Another way to get your creative mind flowing is to research some ideas online. Google, Pinterest, and Houzz are great resources for images of different floor plans and furniture layouts of all the rooms in your house. Although your house may not have the exact same dimensions or features, it is still beneficial in coming up with different arrangements you could try out and figuring out what appeals to you and what doesn’t.
Filling up a new space just the way you like can be both exciting and challenging. Don’t make the work more difficult by going in blind. Take these helpful tips to plan and strategize, and you’ll be on your way to design a floor plan that is beautiful and efficient.
