True or false: “I have a small room, so I need small furniture.”

Answer: Fake.

I call this “dollhouse syndrome.” The truth is, while you want your furniture to be PROVIDED, it doesn’t need to be small, per se. You see, your brain plays interesting tricks on you when it comes to proportions. If you have a small room and you fill it with small pieces, your brain says, “Look at these little things … I must be in a very small space.” In contrast, when you put one or two larger pieces in a small room, now your brain says, “Good! Look at the large pieces we have here! I must be in a large space!”

Keep in mind that the larger your pieces, the fewer you will have. Regardless of the ACTUAL size of the room, you need to keep free paths to walk and enough room to breathe so that your furniture is not on top of each other.

Living rooms are a great example of this principle. Today, most homes have a “formal” living room in the front of the house and the family room in the rear. (Every now and then I see these two rooms together … an unfortunate architectural choice that I’ll never understand, but I stray from the topic.) Most of the time, I see the poor, alienated formal living room filled with a small Chippendale sofa and maybe a loveseat, two tiny wing chairs, several small-scale tables, miniature lamps, a small upright piano. and some very old-fashioned works of art, possibly chosen by someone’s elderly aunt. Yuck! And the owners are frustrated that no one is using the space … go figure!

First, consider how many people you can realistically imagine sitting in this room at the same time. We are not in the early 20th century, when many friends can gather for afternoon tea. If you have a room maybe 12 x 15, you’ll only put 4-6 people in there before it feels like a can of sardines … So what the hell do you need all those pieces for?

Next, find out what you want to MAKE in your small space and get only as many pieces as you absolutely need. Do you want to be able to snuggle with a book while your husband watches the game or his teens evict him from the family room? Get yourself a comfortable sofa that’s deep enough to snuggle or stretch out (maybe even for a nap!), And a great club chair with an ottoman. Secure them with a 6×9 or 8×10 area rug, get a coffee table that’s big enough that you don’t have to stretch too far to put down your coffee, a side table or two, and good-sized lamps, and voila! It’s over!

Surprisingly, whether in a living room or any other room in your home, when you buy pieces that are comfortable, instead of thinking “small, small, small, small, small”, you will most likely find yourself wearing the square footage you paid for. and the room will look much more inviting and inviting to boot.

Are there limits to what is acceptable? Of course. In the living room in our example, I probably don’t want to find a sectional and wall-mounted entertainment center. Use rational judgment, but don’t fear pieces that are a certain size!