I’m sorry the title of my post got cut off. Also the photo is of a room I had saved on my phone. I would give credit to wherever I found it, but I can’t remember. 😁

My comment on the pic you posted is that that is aheck of a lot of furniture in that space and not IMO planned at all for anyonr to acyully function in there. IMO a room is planned to begin with with a floor plan as detailed as possible and drawn to scale . Then how will you use the space comes next. How many seats do you need on a daily basis , will there be a TV ? IMO there are many things to consider before even looking at furniture. Then when you have that plan look at pieces you like get the measurements come home cut those pieces out of paper to the same scale as the drawing and see how they might work in the space. Remeber there needs to be space for people to walk in the room . I like to get the major pieces in place for the use of the space. Then I add the other stuff that makes it my personal style.

Here's my 2 cents, as a designer with about 20 years experience. Furnishing a room begins with a PLAN. You start your plan by determining what you want to do in the room, which informs everything else. Is it a place for entertaining, eating, TV watching, study, sleeping, playing an instrument? Once you have the function pinpointed, you draw the room to scale, noting positions of every door, window, heating elements, electrical outlets, fireplaces, and anything else of a permanent nature that would affect furniture placement. You look for focal points, natural lighting and views to the outside and to other rooms. The next step is to determine the furniture layout, including upholstery, case goods, floor and wall coverings, and lighting fixtures, keeping in mind scale and proportion as you figure out sizes of furniture, clearances, walkways, sight lines, etc.

Only after you have this "road map" for your room will you begin to look at styles, colors, patterns of textiles, window coverings, and furnishings. You take your road map on all shopping trips, as any furniture salesperson will ask "what size (rug, sofa, table, etc.) are you looking for?" If you don't have the answer at the ready, you will waste a lot of time.

And the last item you choose before the "frills" is the paint color on the walls. It's easier to match a paint color to your palette than the other way around. The "frills" are the decorative accessories like ceramics, paintings, sculpture, photos, vases, etc.

Keep in mind that a room is never totally "done." It will change as your needs change, and should be flexible.

Good luck with your project!

I definitely agree with the comments above from the Pros that how you want to use the room needs to figured out at the start and the design comes from that. Of course we ant our homes to be beautiful, but they have to be functional first. Then figure out how to make them look good.

The room in the photo looks too crowded to me, but if you need a place for seven people to have pre-dinner drinks, then there would be little sense in taking out two chairs. Maybe you'd look for smaller chairs, so it looks less crammed.

You and I could look at the same room and come up with two completely different designs, based on different lifestyles. They might be perfect for us, but not for each other. From experience, and from what I have read on here, multi-purpose rooms (guest rooms that serve as an office, for example) are harder because you are having to plan around competing purposes and usually have to make some compromises. In a similar vein, the more functional a room is, the more important it is to get the functional aspects right and then figure out the best way to design it. As a non-professional, I could design you a fantastic kitchen that would look great until you tried to cook a meal in it.

Thank you so much for all of this information-it’s so helpful to hear from professionals