When you’re buying furniture for your home, it’s important to ensure that the furniture you’re looking at will fit into the space you have available. It sounds obvious, but the true size of furniture in relation to your space can be deceptive when you see it in different surroundings.
Read on to discover how to ensure you end up with furniture that fits perfectly!
There are several situations in which you can inadvertently end up with furniture that doesn’t quite fit in the space you have available.
Many people find that it’s easy to overlook the actual size of a room when you’re looking at new houses to buy and assume that your favourite furniture will automatically fit into your new home.
But room sizes do vary – especially when you’re moving from an older home with larger rooms to a new build house with smaller proportions – and what worked before won’t necessarily work again.
There’s also the issue of show homes being laid out with minimal furniture in place – a technique now often employed by keen home sellers too.
A room may look adequate at a viewing without too much in it, but when you come to add your furniture, space is at a premium.
Take Measurements
In order to ensure you get the right size and fit of furniture, you’ll need to take measurements.
Find a tape measure, or steel rule, and measure the space you have available in your desired spot. It’s useful to take the measurements in both inches and centimetres, as you can guarantee that if you only do it in one type, the shop will be using the other form.
You may well find that there aren’t currently pieces of furniture on the market in your exact ideal size, so it’s good to note down your absolutely maximum measurements too.
This also helps you avoid looking at items of furniture that look lovely and you think could possibly fit, when in fact there’s no hope at all.
Is There Room to Get it in Your House?
An easily overlooked issue when buying furniture is the more practical consideration of whether there’s actually room to get it into your house in the first place.
If you have a narrow front door, awkward entrance, narrow or winding stairs, then all of these measurements need to be taken into account too.
Some pieces of furniture will come flatpacked or ready to be assembled, so it’s no so much of an issue.
But for larger pieces of furniture, such as sofas, they’re more likely to come ready made and, apart from the legs or feet in some instances, need to be brought into the house as they are.
It’s very frustrating to buy a special piece of furniture, then discover it won’t fit through your front door or up the stairs in order to reach the room you’d like it in.
Some shops even add a clause in saying that items can’t be returned once purchased, especially if they’re bought in a sale, so it’s crucial you check for such details first.
So before you buy new furniture, take a not of measurements around your house too – the width or height of your front door, the width of a hall and the width of any awkward corners on winding stairs.
It may seem like a bit of a faff and hassle, but trust us, it could save a lot more stress and hassle in the long run.
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