Tricks of the Trade: Furniture Placement
In terms of FURNITURE PLACEMENT, it is usually best not to align the furniture with the longer direction of the room, thus emphasizing it’s disproportion. Instead of making the room look imbalanced and the furniture look even longer than it is – like a tunnel, turn all the pieces against the grain (in the opposite direction). This way, with the sofa adjacent to the long wall, it creates a more harmonious, balanced effect in the whole room. In effect, the furniture squares the room providing a more balanced and visually pleasing feel. The windows then seem to frame the sofa and the sofa magically gives the draperies or window frame a sense of scale relative to the furniture in the room. For instance, a set of couches that face one another are set on visual axis parallel to the window wall. Whether the wall be a window or fireplace or niche, the positioning creates a destination point, an eye-stop, putting closure to the vista, instead of the eye roaming out the window to some unspecified outdoor location or piece of wall. Then, to make the room even more defined and balanced, the professional designer knows to square the opposing sofas with a set of club chairs, and if space allows, an opposing set of ottomans facing the chairs. This will fill in and define the living space without it looking like a furniture showroom or office. Balance, order, and harmony is what rules.
