How to choose furniture for your interior

Recommendation points

• Functional tasks
• We plan the placement
• Determine the maximum budget
• We select furniture according to the style of the interior
• Choosing a color scheme

In this article, we will tell you about the steps that each homeowner planning to purchase furniture has to go through, what features of choice you should pay attention to, as well as how to plan an arrangement and modern gadgets that will become your assistants in this process..

At first glance, it seems that today it will not be difficult to choose furniture for any room in the house. Indeed, the choice is so great that the main question is the financial possibilities of the owner of the house..

However, often even a very expensive sofa, which looked great in the store, suddenly turns out to be more than needed at home, does not fit into the already decorated style of the interior, and in general, this is not at all what we wanted! There is a problem with storage places – the owners who did not think in advance how many drawers and shelves they need, are then forced to look for an opportunity to additionally install a bedside table or hang a shelf.

That is why the choice of furniture is a very important task. Moreover, you get it for more than one year, you have to live with it long enough, and the price of the issue is far from a penny. We hope that our article will help you choose the right pieces of furniture for each room of your apartment or house..

Without furniture, it is impossible to imagine any room in the house, be it a huge living room or a tiny kitchen. It is thanks to the correctly selected headset that this bedroom has become so cozy and functional.

Functional tasks

Before you go to a store or place an order on the Internet, you should calmly think what kind of furniture you need. You must answer yourself the following questions:

1. What exactly will stand in the bedroom, living room, etc. For example, will your main storage space be a wardrobe in the hallway, or is there not enough space and will you have to put it in the bedroom? Where will the computer desk be located – in the bedroom or living room?
2. How many storage locations do you need. Think about whether one closet is enough for the whole family, or do you need a separate locker for children’s clothes? If you have a large library, consider how many bookshelves you need. There is a collection of dishes or souvenirs – you need a place for them too.
3. Will there be a double bed in the bedroom, where the children will sleep, is there a need for guests who can stay overnight?
4. Can one and the same piece of furniture perform multiple functions? Thus, a fold-out sofa will become a comfortable sleeping place, a sliding and rising coffee table will become a dining table, and a bed with drawers will become a storage space. Such options are especially relevant for small spaces..

When thinking about the number of necessary pieces of furniture, do not forget that furniture should first of all fulfill certain functions and meet the needs of all family members. Ideally, if this is your first time furnishing your new apartment, you should make lists of the necessary pieces of furniture for each room..

In this bedroom, both the high headboard bed and the baroque bedside tables are in perfect place. The size, shape and style of furnishings are impeccably selected

We plan the placement

So, we have decided on the number of pieces of furniture and their functions. Now you have to decide where exactly all this will stand. At this stage of planning the arrangement of furniture, you can act in different ways:

1. Just walk around the room and imagine where to put what. Be sure to “arm yourself” with a tape measure and measure every corner to determine the maximum dimensions of a sofa, wardrobe or bed.
2. Draw the location of cabinets and shelves directly on the wall – it will turn out quite clearly. This method is ideal for the location of vertical storage places, for example, parts of a kitchen unit or a wall in a living room, although it will be possible to designate the maximum height of the back of a sofa or head of the bed on the wall..
3. Draw a diagram of your room, keeping the selected scale. Then draw pieces of furniture on the same scale, cut and rearrange them on the diagram, choosing the optimal location for the set.
4. Use modern computer programs. An application for choosing furniture, designed for a computer, smartphone or tablet, will allow you to conveniently, quickly and very clearly imagine how the vending piece of furniture will look in your room. Such programs work simply – you take pictures of your room, choose furniture from the presented catalog and arrange them in their places in your virtual interior. The resulting picture will allow you to assess how well the new sofa or chair will fit in the room..
5. With masking tape, mark the places on the floor where you plan to put the chair or sofa. This option is suitable for arranging upholstered furniture, which will take up a lot of space on the floor. Such dedicated areas will allow you to determine the maximum size of the furniture..
6. Contact professionals and order a furniture design project. In general, it is an excellent option that shifts all the hassle of choosing and arranging furniture onto the shoulders of specialists. The main disadvantage of this solution is the high cost of the design project. Besides, your ideas about beauty may not coincide with the opinion of the designer. You can also use such a service as “Express Design Consultation”. In this case, a professional designer does not draw up a detailed and therefore expensive furniture project, but simply gives a few tips. Such a visit usually takes about three hours and is relatively inexpensive..

When making a plan for arranging furniture, remember that each room will have its own semantic center. In the bedroom, they usually become a bed, in the living room – a set of upholstered furniture, a fireplace, an original coffee table or a wall with bookshelves, in the kitchen – a dining table, and in a nursery – a workplace or a bright sofa. It is necessary to arrange the rest of the furniture in such a way as to emphasize the importance of this central piece of furniture..

In this spacious bedroom, we managed to put a full set of furniture – a king-size bed, two bedside tables and a spacious wardrobe

Dedicated iPad apps can replace traditional furniture planning methods. With their help, you can feel like a real interior designer and spend several hours enthusiastically arranging all new furniture models in their places.

Determine the maximum budget

The price issue is very important, as it significantly limits the choice. For example, furniture of a well-known brand cannot be cheap, author’s and created in a single copy – even more so. At the same time, nothing prevents you from typing “luxury furniture” in the search box. Take a look, ask the price, and then you can search for similar models at a more affordable price.

The material for making furniture also depends on the maximum cost that the owners can afford. Of course, furniture made from solid natural wood, with hand-made forged parts or from exotic materials, for example, bamboo or rattan, will cost more than furniture made of MDF and chipboard.

Realistically assess your capabilities and focus on offers in the price range available to you.

A leather sofa, an original carved coffee table, soft armchairs, a chest of drawers by the window and elegant cabinets allowed this cozy fireplace room to be fully furnished.

Such chairs and a round table resting on an original leg will cost more just because they are made in Italy

We select furniture according to the style of the interior

Before choosing furniture, you should also decide on the interior design. You do not want your living room, planned as a real example of high-tech style, to turn into a room, the arrangement of which clearly ended at the “high-tech” stage. Namely, the wrong selection of furniture will lead to this effect..

Remember that furniture that is ideal for modern style can never harmoniously fit into a strict classic interior. For the convenience of buyers, sometimes the furniture catalog immediately indicates that this set is designed in a specific design style. So, you can find furniture in Provence or Baroque style. But most often in such catalogs only the manufacturer, cost and material of manufacture are indicated, and the buyer himself has to guess about the stylistic orientation by the external parameters of the piece of furniture.

In our articles devoted to describing various styles of interiors, we have already written about the features of furniture. In short, there are the following basic rules:

1. Furniture with carved facades, sofas with rounded backs, chairs with gracefully curved legs are perfect for historical interior styles, for example, classics and baroque. In such interiors, metal and glass furniture is not appropriate..
2. But for high-tech and other modern styles, you should choose furniture with laconic facades, possibly glass, with shiny chrome details. Upholstered furniture should be chosen with strict straight shapes, with monochromatic upholstery.
3. Ethnic styles love variegation, so in this case, upholstered furniture can be bright, with appropriate patterns and ornaments. And it is better to prefer cabinet furniture to dark wood and strict forms..
4. Wrought iron furniture is ideal for Mediterranean interiors or country style.
5. Japanese or Chinese interiors require bamboo furniture, as well as objects with dark lacquered facades decorated with carvings.

If you are determined to decorate the interior in strict accordance with a certain design style, be sure to pay attention to the choice of suitable furniture, otherwise all your efforts will not be crowned with success.!

We advise you, going to the store, to print several photos at home with the pieces of furniture you like and ask them to show something similar. Stock up on a real “portfolio” to show the manager what style of furniture you are interested in.

Such a milky sofa will look perfect in a modern interior, decorated, for example, in a minimalist style.

Light wood furniture looks great in a light Scandinavian style, with minimal decor. In this dining area, the dining group is designed in the same style as the sideboard with glass doors.

Choosing a color scheme

When choosing a color scheme for furniture, there are two main options:

1. Selection of furnishings in the same color scheme as the finish. For example, if you have light green walls in your room, you can purchase a soft kit in a darker shade of green. In this case, brown will go well with beige, and blue with blue. Such an interior will turn out to be very calm, perhaps somewhat boring, but at the same time it will never cause irritation and will always be relevant..
2. Contrasting colors. This option assumes that it is the furniture that will become the brightest accent of the interior. The classic combination is black and white, but this option will seem to many too laconic. You can also choose proven combinations of blue with yellow or milky, green and rich brown, gray and turquoise. In modern styles, one of the most fashionable combinations is lilac and silver..

By the way, furniture matching apps also allow you to change the color of selected items, so you can immediately see how a particular sofa upholstery looks against the background of your walls..

Using apps for a tablet or smartphone, you can change not only the color of the furniture, but also the material of the upholstery

This spacious living room combines black leather furniture with gray decorative stone walls. And the floor covering, well imitating the warmth of natural wood, made the interior more homely, not so office

Without the bright red sofa, this crisp white room would be like a hospital room. It was such a bright detail that made the interior very original and attractive in its own way.

Our recommendations are especially useful for homeowners planning to completely replace furniture in one of their rooms or choosing furniture for their new home for the first time. Take your time to the nearest furniture store to purchase what is in stock. Think over your decision well, prepare in advance, go through all the mandatory selection steps and only after all this place an order in the catalog, call a furniture maker or go to the store.