How to Easily Test Room Configurations - Make a custom layout

One of the best ways to make a small space seem bigger is to place your furniture in the best possible configuration but furniture is big and heavy making it unappealing to move around just to see how it may look. At least that was the case for me. As a result, I made myself a room layout.

Originally it started out as just my bedroom, because that was my focus at the time, but once I had the room drawn out and the furniture cut out, I realized it would be fun to do the whole apartment so I did. I wish I had have taken pictures of my progress (for this and several other projects too) but I can show you the finished product and share what I learned.

Firstly, determine what scale you want to use (mine was 1 mm for 1 inch) and a rough estimate of the rectangular foot print of you house, room or apartment. This will allow you to get the right size piece of paper (as you can see in the final photo), I had to add more to mine.



Now, gather your materials:

Ruler
Measuring tape
Pencil
Scissors
Paper for drawing
Paper for notes




Next you want to accurately measure your space. I would suggest doing the shell first and then the individual rooms. I also suggest having some help - it would have been easier if I had someone to hold the other end of the measuring tape. It also would have helped to have a measuring tape that was long enough to measure things...oops!

As a side note - consider the width of the walls in your drawing. You may have already thought about this but I forgot and when I was checking my numbers everything was off.

Once you have the floor plan start measuring, drawing and cutting out your furniture. As a reality check, I laid my furniture on my floor plan as it was in my apartment and double checked my measurements by comparing the space between my furniture was accurate to the real spaces (this is when I realized that I hadn't considered the width of the walls between rooms).

This was my final product - a poorly taken picture of it at least. I happened to have an old bulletin board so I placed my layout on it and used push pins so that I could easily move furniture but also have everything stay put if I accidentally moved it.

 

My ultimate plan is to either paint the bulletin board white and redraw the room onto it or to use a cheap metal cookie sheet painted white. The benefit of the metal pan is I can put magnets on the back of my furniture pieces so they will stay in place but I won't have pins popping out everywhere. I also want to colour my furniture so they stand out more and match their real life equivalents. I will try my best to take photos when I do this!

Hope you enjoyed. If you make your own please share it with us!