How important is interior design space planning? Space planning is all about function. When doing a decorating job you need to think about how much space you'll have to work with. Involved in this is measurements...
When doing a decorating job you need to think about how much space you'll have to work with. Involved in this is measurements and drawing the plan, and figuring out many different ways that you can arrange a room. Instead of testing your drawings out on a piece of paper, you can use helpful CD-ROMs to create floor plans.
Prepare by drawing a floor plan gives you an idea of what to work with. You can experiment with many different options before you make a change. A floor plan helps you sketch out how much materials you need to get the job done.
Measure by using a steel measuring tape to jot down the actual measurements of the room and whatever is necessary. Before measuring, make a sketch of the floor plan and be sure to include all the needed furniture and amenities in your sketch. Measure along the length of the baseboard from one corner of the room to another corner of the room.
Steps:
1. Measure to the nearest ΒΌ inch and put this approximate inch on the floor plan.
2. Include every four walls in the sketch, this way you can determine what color or wall covering.
3. Measure any openings, whether it's doors or open archways from the ends of the walls.
4. Measure any features that's part of the house, shelves, the brackets, and any built-in-features. Once you've finished measuring, draw your floor plan by using graph paper.
5. Lightly pencil the main parts of the room on the graph paper, including any revisions or changes that need to be made.
6. Make note of direction of the room.
7. Ask yourself where you would put electrical wiring or any outlets.
By drawing a wall elevation, it will help you determine to place tall pieces of furniture and any other accessories. Mary Noe, Academic Director of Interior Design at the Illinois Institute of Art - Schaumberg says, "For instance, sometimes you put a sofa behind a sofa table to cover the first. I think the first reason people started doing that was to disguise the sometimes boring backside. Then, these people started to realize that this sofa table had so many possibilities for additional functions, and they would put lamps on top of it."
After you've made a basic two-dimensional floor and wall plan, make note of the square footage of the room. Multiply the room's length by its width. If the room were to be L-shaped it would be broken into four-sided sections, get the square footage of each area, and add them together for the total.
Make copies of your plan, be sure to make enough and keep your plan work with you or in a file labeled "floor plan." This would be your guide for when you go on a shopping trip to know how much paint, wall covering, or carpeting you'll need.
It's important to know how you will be decorating your room, when you've gotten your completed analysis of your plan, make what's use of your space and where you'll be positioning your furniture and any electrical appliances. Mary believes that "When you walk into the room, you want to see a magnificent painting hanging over the fireplace mantle. You know that the placement or the planning has now taken on a nonfunctional role. It gives you something aesthetic to enjoy. In that room you use furniture pieces that will intrigue you and draw you closer in. It should start with function."
By virtual planning you can remodel and redecorate as oppose to having to sketch out or erase your drawings. You can see the work of your room in a three-dimensional cyber version and a two-dimensional colorful 3-D plan. Once you're done, you can view the results of your plans and you can print them out. Mary says "Space planning becomes an issue of solving the problem to inventing new uses for otherwise kind of unnecessary pieces of furniture."
