7 Tips for First-Time Furniture Arrangers

Whether you've just signed the lease on a new apartment or become the proud owner of your very own home, the next step in the moving-in process can be daunting: turning all those empty rooms into showroom-worthy tableaus of tasteful interior decor.

 Fortunately, arranging furniture can be easy—on the brain and on the muscles—if you follow some simple guidelines from the pros and steer clear of a few common rookie mistakes. Here are the best tips for putting a room together.

1. USE VIRTUAL TOOLS TO PLAN YOUR SPACE.
 
Before you start shoving your furniture around—or pull the trigger on that huge, expensive sectional sofa that may or may not even fit in your living room—use an online tool like Pottery Barn's online room planner or Better Homes and Gardens's arranging tool to play with potential layouts. And if you need ideas for decorating a small or quirky space, Pinterest can be a great source of inspiration (if not outright copycatting).

2. KEEP AN OPEN LINE OF SIGHT.

Visual space is important when it comes to furniture placement, since your eyes will wander around a room even when you're sitting still. Susie Novak, of West Coast-based interior design firm Susie Novak Interiors, says that first-time decorators often ask themselves whether a piece can physically fit, but stop short of questioning whether it jives with the character of the space. "Scale is a big one. I’ve often seen big sectionals in small rooms and small sofas in large rooms. The scale of the piece should suit the space," she explains.

If your room has a focal point—like the living room fireplace, for instance—you'll want to keep the sight lines open between it and the entrance, so it's one of the first things you see when you walk in. And don't forget to consider how your space will look when glimpsed from another room; something like the back of a sofa can read like a big, bulky blockade if it's all you see when you look through the doorway. The view into a room should be attractive, or at least unobstructed, to make the space inviting.

3. IF IT DOESN'T FIT, NOBODY SITS.

It probably goes without saying, but you don't want your decor to physically get in your way. Properly placed furniture should allow you to easily navigate your space without having to dodge, weave, or do parkour. Your "traffic lanes", i.e. the paths you use when walking around or through a room, should be roughly the same width as your doorways (usually two-and-a-half to three feet), so aim to leave at least this much space anywhere that you have two pieces of furniture you plan to be walking between. And of course, don't forget that anything you intend to put into a room has to fit through the door first; if you have exceptionally narrow doorways and not much room to maneuver, you may need to rethink your commitment to the overstuffed leather executive suite look.

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