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How Will It Look at Christmas?

The room planner templates include just about every household item you can imagine.  You can even layer rugs under your furnishings, see how a “Christmas tree” would look in the room, try out a “drum set” or place “loose papers” and “plants” around the room for realism.

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  • Room Planning Made Easy

    Find out how you can “try on” furniture and colors for your room—before buying.

    by Deanna L. Thompson

    Whether you’re furnishing a new house or redecorating an existing room, one of the biggest challenges is visualizing how your choices will look in your space.

    That’s where room planning comes to the rescue. Using the HomeFurnishings.com online Room Planner and Color Visualizer, you can plot out the dimensions of your space—and try different furnishings, layouts and color schemes until your room reflects your personal style. Here are some tips to help you get the most from these free tools.

     

    Avoid the Squeeze

    Is a 96-inch table too large for your dining room? Will a dresser and an armoire overload your bedroom? Would a sectional work in your living room, or is a sofa and chair better?  

    A room planner helps answer these questions the easy way—before you’ve purchased the furniture. You can drag and drop items on-screen and get a feel for what works and what doesn’t in your space.

    You can quickly see problems with scale (too much or too little furniture for the room size) and traffic patterns. Dining rooms are a key place where consumers’ appetites for furniture are often bigger than their space, leading to overcrowded spaces.

    “People many times don’t think about leaving space to pull out chairs, walk around the dining room and serve food,” says Mandy Neuman of Becker Furniture World in Becker, Minn.

     

     

    Ready, Set, Plan!

    Creating your room plan online is simple using our Room Planner. Start by measuring your room and those all-important non-movable elements, such as windows, doors and built-ins.

    Once you click on the Room Planner link here or on the left side of the HomeFurnishings.com homepage, a room diagram box opens. Personalize it to match your room by clicking on the shape that resembles yours, and editing the width and length as needed. Then use your mouse to drag new shapes and create any “doglegs” in your room. Once you’ve created your room shape, add structural elements, such as fireplaces, doors and windows, from the templates at left. 

    Once your room takes shape, save it using the computer icon in the upper left corner. This will be your basic room before anything is added. (To save your room plan, you’ll be prompted to create a HomeFurnishings.com account if you don’t have one. It takes just a minute to create one.)

    Now, you can enjoy the fun stuff: placing and moving furniture.

    On the left side of the screen, you’ll find more than a dozen “templates.” Click on “Living Room,” for example, and you’ll find sofas, loveseats, chairs, tables, pianos and more that you can drag into your “room” with your mouse. Click on the “i” icon to see information about the item and change its size, color and position. Click, hold and drag the “90 degree” symbol to rotate the item. To see your selected item in different locations, drag it around with your mouse.

    At the top of the screen are buttons to click for more options, such as using a ruler to measure—and using the all-important “undo” button to reverse your last move.

    As you experiment, you can save as many plans as you wish. Just give each a different name.

     

    See Your Colors

    Picking a color palette for your room can be as tough as imagining the furniture in place. That’s where our Color Visualizer can help. Just click “Try it” on the homepage (or the “Color Visualizer” links in this article) to get started. Click the bar at right to choose the type of room you’re decorating—say, a living room. Finally, pick a photo (consider the one that looks most like your room) to “color” on.

    You can paint the walls and add carpet or install wood or tile on the floors. You can even add color to moldings and ceilings. (Run your mouse over the photo to see surfaces you can color.) Click the left bar to see what’s already in the picture. Click the bar in the middle to choose the surface you’ll work on first. As you pick a paint color or type of flooring to try, you simply drag it into the picture—and the areas where you can place it are highlighted. Don’t like how it looks? Drag another idea onto the photo. What’s great about the Color Visualizer is that you can see colors together and get an idea of what combinations inspire you. Then save, print and e-mail your finished rooms.

     

    From On-Screen to In-Home

    When you’ve finished planning and colorizing the perfect virtual room, just print your results and bring them with you shopping. And soon your on-screen vision will become an in-home reality.