When I was a kid, I used to shut myself in the bedroom I shared with my sister and rearrange all of our furniture in strange ways just for a fresh feel in our personal space. My parents had no idea how I managed to drag the two four-poster beds and the cedar chest around the room, but bless them, they let me do it, and my obsession for space planning has only grown since then!
These days I have the luxury of moving furniture around on paper before any manual labor becomes involved. Space planning is made easier with a simple floor plan to help you maximize your room’s full potential before any design decisions are made. I always create a floor plan and arrange a space on paper before buying furniture to fill it. And because of my planning, I’ve never been disappointed by how things fit into our home.
You can easily create a floor plan for your home too without ever setting foot in design school and without any special computer software. Check out how simple it is to plan your space!
Take Measurements
The first step to creating a floor plan is to measure your space. It’s helpful to have someone assist with holding the tape measure across long expanses to get accurate measurements. I usually roughly draw out the space, including doorways and fenestration, before taking the actual measurements. Then, as I measure, I jot down the feet and inches on my crudely drawn floor plan.
Transfer Measurements to Graph Paper
Transform your notes into a to-scale floor plan with the assistance of 1/4″ graph paper. (You can print out the graph paper I used here.) Traditionally, interior plans are drawn at quarter-inch scale, which means a quarter inch on paper is equal to one foot in real life. You can make a quarter-scale floor plan by using the boxes of the graph paper as your guide—no need for a t-square, triangle, or architect’s scale, and definitely no need for AutoCAD here! Each box of the graph paper equals one foot in reality. So half of a box equals six inches and half of that is three inches. You get the idea!
Count out the boxes according to your measurements, using the lines of the grid to draw your walls. Keep in mind that interior walls are usually about 5″ thick, so be sure to account for their thickness when creating your plan.
Create To-Scale Furniture Cut-Outs
After your floor plan is complete, you’re ready to fill your space with furniture or cabinetry! If you haven’t purchased furniture yet, use the measurements available in the product details from a catalog or website to draw to-scale versions of items you’re interested in. If you’re using furniture you already own, just take measurements and transfer them to the graph paper.
After your furniture and fixtures have been drawn, carefully cut them out, making sure not to cut away the black outlines.
Arrange Furniture and Fixtures
This is where things get fun. It’s a bit like playing with paper dolls! Now that you have all of your furnishings and fixtures drawn to scale and cut out, you can arrange and rearrange them in your space. If things aren’t working out, you might decide that the furniture you were considering might not be right for your home. Or maybe the space you’re considering renting or buying isn’t right for your needs. Planning like this can be so helpful for lots of reasons!
When arranging furniture, be sure to note spacing standards for major and minor pathways.
– Major Pathways: Allow 30-48 inches for areas where it is common for two people to occupy the same pathway.
– Minor Pathways: Allow 24-36 inches for areas where one person will be traveling, such as entries to a seating area.
– Furniture Spacing: Allow no less than 18 inches between furnishings where passage is required, such as between a coffee table and a sofa. Less space is acceptable (and usually beneficial) where no passage is required, such as between a side table and chair.
Create a Presentation Plan
Once you’ve arranged things how you like, you might decide to create a presentation version of your floor plan just for fun, or maybe so you can decide on decorative details, like furniture colors and rug styles. To do this, lay a translucent paper (like marker paper) over your floor plan and trace around everything. For a presentation copy, you’ll probably want to use a ruler to draw straight lines, and a thick marker is nice for filling in the walls.
If you’ve used marker paper for tracing your presentation plan, my favorite way to render interior drawings is with Prismacolor Markers. The best paper to use is Bienfang marker paper—just make sure you’re drawing on the correct side! It takes some practice to figure out blending techniques and such with markers, but the end result can be really, really nice. You can easily use colored pencils instead of markers, though the process will be more time consuming. I also really enjoy the look of watercolored floor plans but have never mastered the control it takes to watercolor a floor plan in quarter scale. These days I tend to use Photoshop for most of my work, as shown here, because it’s easy to correct mistakes, drop in textures, duplicate things, and change colors with the click of the mouse. Even when rendering digitally, though, I find that I try to replicate the look of markers.
Of course, you don’t need to render your floor plans if you’re just space planning, but it can be a lot of fun to visualize your space coming together before even moving one piece of furniture or spending a dime on accessories. Once you’ve mastered making a floor plan, drawing elevations is really fun too, and will give you a great sense for how your space is coming together, decor-wise. If you like planning, why not give it a try?
