Three Tips to Assigning Space in your Home

Home decor and placement will ultimately set the tone of your home. When setting-up your home decor, it’s important to keep in mind what space you want to belong to whom. You should consider just how much your home will be set for the comfort of others and not just yourself. Also, if you plan to have company over on a regular basis, you need to decide what you want your home to say about you. Are you going to be more concerned with fashionability and appearance or functionality and comfort? Here are some tips that could help make your decision a little easier:

Knowing “Your” Space and “Shared” Space

No matter the size of your home, you will inevitably come to claim a certain amount of space as your own. Depending on your living arrangements and possible roommate situations, the obvious choices would be a bedroom, bathroom, and maybe a study. But what about the rest? Do you want it to remain aloof and unclaimed or have a clearly-seen sense of ownership? You can determine this by assessing comfort levels, being your own and those of others. By thinking about how comfortable you want to be, compared to how comfortable you want others to be, you’ll gain an idea for what space belongs to who in your home. 

Working with the Flow in a Room

In looking at your furniture, you need to think about the flow of foot-traffic you want in a given area. Understanding that you may be working with a limited space, it’s possible your furniture could put some constraints on your arrangement options. However, it’s a requirement for you to think about necessary foot-traffic. Think about access to doors, desired angles of view when arranging the furniture, and how the laid-out paths of the room could possibly affect the flow of traffic. Obviously, the more room you have, the more you can play around with this, but you should also be willing to accept your constraints, like when some kitchens may be too small for a center-set table but one set against a far wall would still allow proper flow to work. Ultimately, you need to work with what you’ve got.

Understanding that Presentation matters

In looking at a room, you need to decide both what you want it to say about you and how you want others to feel when they’re in it. It’ll boil down to how personalized you want your (possibly-shared) space to be. Do you want your decor to describe something about you or make others think something specifically? Obviously, the answer to this question will vary from room-to-room, but there are aspects of decor to bear in mind throughout. Color-scheme is one such aspect (darker blues and purples can have a calming effect, while brighter reds and warm colors in general can energize, on a subconscious level at least). Another aspect could be furniture size (a large poofy couch could be seen as more inviting than an undersized and firm loveseat). There’s also spacing (people can feel less-cramped when furniture is widely-dispersed through an area). Just try to keep some of these in mind. 

It all comes down to a balance of comfort in the end, which will of course depend on your personal preferences. Are you the type of person who wants to display who you are through your decor or remain inscrutable to guests on a certain level of disarming appearances? Do you want your room to have easy access with clearly-follow-able foot-traffic pathways? Do you want to keep your guests calm or alert while waiting in your shared space? It’s up to you in the end to arrange what you want how you want, just keep these things in mind.

Kiersten Gurry is a freelance writer in Flagstaff, Arizona. She writes on a wide variety of topics in the home improvement industry specializing in ornamental artwork. In her spare time she writes for First Impression Security Doors.http://firstimpressionsecuritydoors.com/