Go With The Flow

Your layout feels off but you can’t quite figure out why? Here’s how you can rearrange things to achieve better flow of movement and greater comfort in your home.

Designing your home is not just about buying the right furniture and picking out the most suitable colours—how you plan your space is equally important. In fact, designing your surroundings without considering flow of movement in your home can end up doing your carefully picked furnishings and features a disservice, making them appear inadequate and decreasing your comfort. Whether you’re devising your home for the first time or want to give your current space a makeover, here are some of our best tips and tricks.

1. Create a focal zone

The easiest starting point for effective space planning is to strip down each room to its main function. You will need to figure out what the purpose of the room is, pick out the one item that fulfils this purpose, and build around it. In a dining room, for instance, the dining table should be the feature that everything else points to. Position your chairs around the table and hang your main lighting source above or around it in order to highlight the whole set-up. To enhance this visual focus even further, place the table and chairs on an area rug, facilitating the flow of movement around the dining zone by demarcating it as its own little island.