This ever happen to you? You found that really great piece of furniture—a couch, bed, table—whatever!—and you just KNOW that it will fit perfectly. And then you actually get it home and see the reality of your purchase. Ugh.
We’ve all been there, but before you head off to make your next furniture purchase, whether it’s custom-ordered at a store or a lucky find at a local garage sale, we’ve got a few tips to make sure that you end up with the right size piece for your space.
First thing: Start by getting accurate measurements of your room space and make sure to include things like doorways and ceiling heights as well. If you have existing furniture in the room, it’s a good idea to take note of those dimensions as well.
Once you have all your measurements, there are quite a few ways to tackle the project:
The old school method: Sit down with some graph paper and a pencil; scale your drawings to the paper size and you’ll have an excellent template for your room design. Time consuming, but for many of us, effective and sometimes even cathartic!
Low-Tech: There are quite a few good, free online resources to help you with this. Better Homes and Gardens has an online application called Arrange a Room. Simply select the shape of your room, add in your dimensions and you’re off and running. If you’re looking for something a little more detailed, check out Floor Planner, a web-based program that will allow you to enter your dimensions and quickly create and share an interior design plan for any room in your home. There is a cool drag-and-drop function that allows you to virtually place furniture in your plan.
For iPhone/iPad devotees: Yep, there’s an app for this! Check out MagicPlan by Sensopia, a free app in the iTunes store that utilizes the camera feature on your device to measure and create the floor plan for your room. Simply snap the photos of the corners of your room and MagicPlan measures the walls and doors, identifies the shape of the room and draws the floor plan. The floor plan can then be exported into another format such as JPEG or PDF. For more information on how this works, you can also visit the Sensopia website.
And remember…the furniture at Amish Originals can be custom ordered to fit the scale and the size of any room; we’ve always got the measuring tape ready to help you determine exactly what the “perfect” size should be for your home!
From our home to yours,
Amish Originals