Lesson 1: The Five Basic Factors
Traffic Flow
The next time you bump your shin on the corner of the coffee table as you're rushing up from the sofa to answer the doorbell, think traffic flow! You may think you've placed your furniture in the "only" possible configuration - but if people (and pets) can't move smoothly through the room, around the conversation areas or major furniture groups, or if the only way to get to the bathroom is through a bedroom - you need to rethink the placement of your furniture, and possibly the configuration of your rooms.
One of our recommended texts, Use What You Have, by Lauri Ward, has an excellent chapter on traffic flow. Chapter Three, "Proper Furniture Placement", explains step by step the most important principles when arranging the furniture in your room.
I will list the principles without going into her explanations, for what Ward calls "fluid" movement of traffic:
The location of your doorway
The placement of your major piece of furniture
The seating arrangement
Obstructions
Lethal Weapons
Limited Space
(from Use What You Have, by Lauri Ward, pg. 45.)
One of our future lessons will introduce the necessity of making a floor plan of your room, along with a plan for furniture layout. This aerial view of your room will almost instantly highlight the traffic flow and any problems with it.
In the meantime, try this exercise: Take a ball of string or yarn. Tape one end of it to the door frame on one side of the room. Now, loosely unrolling the string as you go along, wend your way to the opposite doorway. Turn around and observe your "trail". Is it full of curves, bends, backtracking? Is it more, or less, than 1 and 1/2 times the distance from door to door? Repeat the exercise from the doorway to the main seating area or workspace. If your "trail" resembles the Mississippi River more than US 95, you need to work on the traffic flow!
