Banana Web

Making a Floor Plan

This procedure can be followed each time you plan a new room. For each plan, use squared or graph paper and a scale of around 2.5 cm(1 inch) to represent 1 meter(3 ft.). Mark all fixed features such as doors, windows, alcoves and fireplaces with semi-fixed items such as radiators and power points marked in a different color. It is helpful to where these are, but they should not over-influence your plans as they can be moved in most cases.

Mark on the plan which areas you are designating for different uses and different times of the day, and start thinking about the essential furniture-kitchen cupboards, beds, tables. Plan likely positions for these pieces, leaving plenty of room for walking around them, stretching legs, opening cupboards and drawers and so on. Next add smaller items whose positions can be more flexible and that can be, if necessary, be removed from the plan if space is proving limited. If you want to try out several different layouts, cut out pieces of card to represent the furniture so that you can move them around until you are happy with the plan.

Be led by the shape of the room, the light it gets, how it fits with the rest of the space and how you are going to use it. But remember that you sometimes have to waste a bit of space in order to create the impression of it-that sense of largesse, of being bale to afford to throw it away, automatically makes the place feel bigger. Leaving corners unfilled and bare areas of wall creates more of an illusion of space than cramming in as much as possible.