How to Plan a Room’s Furniture Layout & ORC Week 1

Remember that time I showed you my great big playroom dreams, and Robert and I dove in to reveal our biggest makeover ever in record time and we danced and sang “This Is How We Do It” together into our hairbrush microphones?

Yeah, me neither.  (And for the record, Robert probably would want me to convey that he isn’t a 16 year old girl singing into imaginary mics.)

Because… after I went all mood board happy on y’all, here’s all of the progress we made.

A big ol’ nope.  Womp womp. Nada. Zilch.

So to light a fire under us and finally get down to business in this space, we’ve decided to participate in our very first One Room Challenge.

If you’ve never heard of it, it’s a room makeover challenge hosted by Calling It Home where bloggers all over blogland have 6 weeks to design a room from start to finish.  Yikes!  I’m not gonna lie, I’m really intimidated.  But it’ll be goooooood.

One of the biggest issues I’ve been spinning my wheels about in this playroom is deciding the best furniture layout.  Most of our rooms in our house have been no-brainers for me, but in here I had the challenge of incorporating our existing sofa and Olivia’s abundance of toys.

I knew I wanted plenty of vertical storage to make it very functional and organized. We needed a couple of desks where Olivia can sprawl out with Play-doh or art and where I can craft and write. My very own Bless’er House blog central, I guess.

Then I found this little gem through a random Google search called Roomstyler.  It’s SO FUN! And really user friendly. And almost feels like you’re playing The Sims. (Did anyone else ever play that game just so they could decorate the houses? I did. I didn’t even care if I killed my characters as long as I had enough money to design rooms. Okay, nerd alert. Sorry. Moving on.)

If you’ve ever struggled with planning your furniture layouts, this site is amazing!

Here is what the the room designing process looks like on the site:

I just typed in the dimensions of my room, searched furniture and decor items, and placed them where I needed.

After playing around with our playroom’s furniture layout for… um… hours, here is the official final design plan.

This doo-dah makes me feel super fancy.

Along with the blueprint style layout, you can also see your design as a 3D room!  And you can even convert it into a 3D video, but I think you have to pay for that capability, so I didn’t try it.

(P.S. Roomstyler didn’t sponsor this post or anything… they probably don’t even know I exist.  I just love sharing great resources with y’all, especially if they’re FREE, when I find them.)

So here is the official playroom design plan:

• Sofa slipcover.  I’m working on trying to DIY a slipcover but since I have no sewing skills at all, and I really want to make sure it’s durable because I want to be able to wash it, I might be buying one instead.  We’ll see how ambitious I’m feeling after the bigger projects in this space are done.
• Storybook art.  Those big alphabet art prints in my mock-up are about the size I plan to make for oversized storybook pages turned into framed art.  I want them to be simple yet sentimental. But more on that later.

3. Rug. I plan on getting a comfy cotton rug in here where Olivia can sprawl out with her toys and books, something with color but not too wild.

4. Built ins.  For this long wall, I want to install floor-to-ceiling built ins with some doors on the bottom for concealed storage.  I couldn’t find an option on the Roomstyler site to let me put in floor-to-ceiling shelves, but you get the idea.

We’ll be putting a TV in the middle of the wall since we still want to be able to use this space as a media room for the whole family or where Olivia can hang out with friends and watch movies.

5. Curtains.  I want some simple, long curtains to make the ceiling look a bit higher.  We plan on framing out that window with our usual DIY Craftsman trim too. (It’s the last one left to be framed in our entire house!)

We’ll probably place some of Olivia’s bigger toys under the window, like her dollhouse and play kitchen.  That ginormous wooden one was the only toy kitchen option on the design site. It won’t be that monstrous, I promise.

6. Paint.  As much as I love white, the builder primer needs to go.  I’m thinking a light gray.  This room is very open, so I want something that is a good neutral and won’t be too kiddyish.  We’ll be pulling in pops of color in the accessories instead, which is always the easiest to adapt and change over time anyway.

7. Desks.  I’ve already found the perfect desks for this little half wall that I can’t wait to show y’all.  One for me and one for Olivia (since Robert already has his manly office).

8. Ceiling fan.  We live in the Carolinas.  Nuff said. Southern girls need their ceiling fans, ya know.

Our very bare hallway and stairwell will eventually be getting some wall decor too, but my wheels are still turning over some art ideas for those two spots.

What do you think so far?  Are you visualizing it a little better now?  Have you ever struggled with furniture placement before?  Or designed on a very official looking site like this one?  Or played The Sims just to do the decorating? It’s okay, we can be nerdy together.

I’ll be sharing all of the whirlwind details of this space as it evolves over the next 6 weeks, and some big changes are already underway around here. Ahh! Can’t wait!

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