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Designing With Functionality: Smart Furniture Solutions for Modern Living

The concept of making spacious living quarters isn’t new, but most think it’s a new trend. Changing the layout by moving the furniture is a form of innovation in many homes. One has to get creative to form the most optimal positions to create the ideal living space. In this article, we’ll learn how to design with functionality and explore some of the smartest furniture solutions.

Photo by R ARCHITECTURE

Get Creative, Explore With Many Layouts!

One could say that working on the layout of the room is similar to a puzzle. You change the pieces of furniture around to form an ideal and functional room layout. For instance, the southwest style furniture that’s inside your living room? You can place it next to decorated seats so that it complements them well. Make sure there’s enough walking space though.

It takes a lot of experimenting before you can find the right layout for you, which we’ll cover shortly in the next section.

Fun and Smart Furniture Solutions You Can Use

At this point, you’re curious about finding out the secrets to smart yet functional furniture solutions. You may even wonder where to get these pieces of furniture. Many  furniture stores in Houston or other states have a wide selection of functional pieces. You can visit these stores' showrooms to have a better look at the furniture you are eyeing. 

Here are some of the fun and smart ideas for furniture that you can use for your rooms at home:

Using a Multi-Purpose Desk

If you’re inside a small study room and you can’t seem to fit everything in that one small space - the best solution is a multi-purpose desk. Your pick on what appearance suits your preferences. You can go for a luxurious-looking finish with the wood glistening a brilliant brown. If you like to have a desk with an aged look like southwest style furniture, go for a paler but stressed color finish.

Appearance styles aside, the many shelves and cabinets should be enough to entertain your books and others. The desk should have enough space for your computer unit or a laptop. This desk eliminates the need for more surfaces to get your small study room decorated.

A Well-Hidden Kitchen

If you've been to any of Houston furniture stores or have done a little research online, you may accidentally come upon the idea of hidden kitchens. Hidden kitchens are best used inside homes with small spaces or if you're the type that likes to surprise people. What is otherwise a simple cabinet, once opened shows/tells about that the cabinet itself is the kitchen!

So if you're into shocking and amazing your visitors with the unexpected; a hidden kitchen might be a fun idea to add into your home.

Harmonizing a Unique Combination of Furniture and Fixtures

Another fun and smart idea that you could play around with is furniture composition. In this case, form a unique composition based on their colors. One good example is the elaborately-patterned southwest style furniture, specifically the seatings. 

You can simply complement these furniture pieces with other items to form a unique composition. For instance, you can use those patterned couches and seats to go with the carpet inside your living room with a varnished coffee table as a centerpiece.

Working with different furniture compositions is great for homeowners with an artistic touch.

  • A note about combining furniture by color - you can use contrasting or complementary color schemes. To explain, contrasting colors is all about combining colorations that are opposing each other. For example, your patterned couches in red are situated inside a room that has a light-blue paint job. 

  • On the other end are complementary colors wherein you form a composition with colors that are close to each other. An example is forming a furniture composition consisting of items with cool colors such as blue, white, and turquoise. One example is placing your blue sofas in a living room, which is complemented by a white carpet with swirls.

  • You could also take a third option by using neutral tones such as brown and use it alongside any of the warm or cool hues. An example is a brown leather-finish couch against a white backdrop complemented by a varnished coffee table.

Cabinets With Overhead Units

Cabinets or wardrobes with overhead units are a welcome addition to any home whose goal is to get more space at home. By utilizing cabinets with an overhead unit, you eliminate the need for any additional storage units or boxes.

For instance, you could clear up more space in your bedroom if you managed to get a cabinet with an overhead unit from a Houston furniture store. The space you get to obtain can be used for decorations such as potted plants or making for the bedroom mirror.

Multi-Functional Foldable Surfaces

Another smart furniture solution you can employ is multi-purpose furniture pieces. The most well-known example among these types of furniture is the foldable tables or surfaces. These surfaces can be folded in and at first look like a simple back section of another piece of furniture. But if you look carefully, you will see that this back section turns out to be a foldable table in the back of a cabinet.

Multi-role furniture such as the aforementioned foldable table is very popular in small living spaces or apartments. 

A Bedroom Complemented by LED Lights

So you’ve managed secure bedding from a mattress store in Houston, and you’d want to do a little creative magic on it. A fun idea that you can use is to have the bed complemented with a headboard that has LED lights on it.

Aside from the purpose of sleeping in the bed; the gentle LED lights open up the idea of reading books at night. This lovely combination of a headboard, LED lights, and a good mattress ends in a very visually-pleasing bedroom.

Recliners and Wingback Chairs

If colorful seats or leather sofas don’t seem to feel enough for your living room - either a recliner or a wingback chair will be the icing on the cake for it. The wingback chair tends to serve as a statement piece inside the household and tends to see use in living rooms. Recliners also serve a similar purpose. 

Whether it’s a pure white color or a leather finish, these chairs are the perfect addition to any living room.

Decorate Your Rooms and Make Them Functional!

At this point, you could already have come up with some fun ideas to tweak the layout of your home. Experiment and play around with your items such as the Houston furniture pieces. See what furniture pieces work together so you can create the most ideal layout at home. Who knows? Once you’ve managed to get the hang of creating pretty but functional setups, you could leave your visitors stunned at your furniture layout.


Author: Dan

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Cover image by Katja Rooke on Unsplash