From No Plan To Floor Plan

By Marshall WatsonThe floor plan frees you. It answers questions, clears doubts and allows you to proceed with your interior design without qualms.

Once you have measured the perimeter of your rooms, the entrances and exits, and the windows, you are prepared to lay out your furniture. By drawing the room in scale—for instance, half inch equals one foot, using graph paper where one square equals one foot, or by working with computer programs to help you with the scale—you can easily start moving around the furnishings and discover whether they all fit in the space. This saves on the backbreaking work of lifting and moving furniture around, and at the same time saves on movers’ fees and frequently prevents you from imposing on the backs and arms of a friend or family member.

Most important, the floor plan is your road map to getting the proportions right.

My first employer and mentor, designer Gary Crain, advised me, “Get the proportions right and you are 90 percent there.” By creating accurate, to-scale floor plans, one observes the scale of the furniture in relation to each other. A gigantic sofa, 42 inches wide and 100 inches long may dwarf a chair that is 26 inches wide and 30 inches deep. The floor plan will show you this odd relationship and how silly it would appear in reality.

The floor plan also teaches you about the flow of the room. Does a chair obstruct an entrance? Is the console too deep for the entry hall? Can you move forward to the window to take in the fabulous ocean view?

Certain measurements are always helpful. For instance, a coffee table is more comfortable sitting 12 to 18 inches from the edge of a chair or sofa or else you need to reach too far to put down your glass of sauvignon blanc. A dining table should sit at least 36 inches away from the sideboard, wall or chest of drawers so that you and your guests can comfortably push yourselves away from the table and walk around the other seated guests. Place upholstered furniture at least three inches off the walls and curtains so you can establish a shadow line. Place case goods such as consoles, chests and breakfronts at least an inch off the wall for the same elegant shadow line look. If pressed up against the walls, it looks like you have an overambitious cleaning crew and your rooms appear institutional. These are small things to think about, and inches add up on floor plans.

Areas that are meant for conversing may have the furniture clustered closer together without overconcern for flow or movement because once you are seated, you stay there and don’t move around much. Most designers recommend furniture groupings that comfortably “converse” with each other. So chairs need to be reasonably close to each other so that your guests aren’t shouting across the room. I do have a big bugaboo about two sofas facing each other. Most often the sofas are large pieces of upholstered architecture and having a large coffee table sitting in between them is the only solution that appears proportional. Hence, people sit at either end of the sofa (since three on a sofa tends never to happen—and the middle person feels awkward) and then they have to talk loudly. You lose the intimacy.

Bunny Williams always recommends a “starter set” of one sofa and two club chairs to anchor a room. The sofa sits in the center of two chairs either flanking it or across from it.

The floor plan provides not only a layout for your furniture arrangement, it also guides you to your lighting plan. Where do you need a good reading light, a chandelier, sconces or recessed lighting fixtures? Do you really need all that light where you are traversing the room? Or do you need the light closer to where you will be reading or putting down a tray of delicious hors d’oeuvres? Does the light guide you to where you want to sit?

Finally, the floor plan helps you to budget your decoration. I never produce a budget without a floor plan because you have to include the existing pieces of furniture, side tables and lamps, etc., so that you can take advantage of what you want to keep and re-use. The plan also allows you to put together a list of chairs, carpets and furnishings you need to purchase so you don’t miss anything. On your list or floor plan, you can assign cost estimates to each item and put together a realistic budget. The plan also points out where you want to hang art, mirrors, and window treatments that also need to be part of your overall budget.

The best part of the floor plan is that it permits you to dream about how you use each room. Perhaps you prefer to dine in the living room, or make room for a cozy reading spot in the dining room. You can see from the three different plans of the same space, how different the results can be. Thus, the small amount of effort it takes to map this plan out reaps huge rewards in how you use your home, apartment or space, and how you budget for its design and decoration.