Furniture layout assistant

How to use the furniture layout assistant

This assistant suggests a furniture arrangement based on your room type, room size, doors, windows, and furniture list. It is designed for homeowners and renters planning a rectangular room layout.

1. Choose a room type: living, bedroom, dining, or office.
2. Select Feet or Metres, then enter the room Width (left to right) and Depth (top to bottom).
3. Review the Doors and windows list. Set each opening's wall, position, width, and hinge where applicable.
4. Adjust the furniture quantities to match the pieces you own or plan to use.
5. Select Show my layout to generate the recommendation.
6. Review the diagram, fit checks, placement rules, and access from the door.

What to enter

Room type

Choose living, bedroom, dining, or office. The tool starts with Bedroom selected. Choosing a room type also loads that room's default furniture list.

Units

Choose Feet or Metres. Room sizes and opening positions use the selected display unit.

Width (left to right)

Enter the room's horizontal dimension. The default is 14 ft. Each room side must be 6 to 40 ft, or 1.8288 to 12.192 m under the internal validation limits.

Depth (top to bottom)

Enter the room's vertical dimension. The default is 16 ft. The same room-size limits apply to this value.

Doors and windows

Review the openings used by the layout search. The default room has a bottom-wall door and a top-wall window. Doors swing into the room.

Wall

Choose Top wall, Right wall, Bottom wall, or Left wall for each door or window. The default door is on the Bottom wall, and the default window is on the Top wall.

From left

For an opening on the Top wall or Bottom wall, enter the distance from the wall's left end to the centre of the opening. The default door is 2.5 ft from the left and the default window is 7 ft from the left.

From top

For an opening on the Left wall or Right wall, enter the distance from the wall's top end to the centre of the opening.

Width

Set the opening width in the selected unit. The default door is 2.67 ft wide, and the default window is 4 ft wide.

Hinge

For doors on the Top wall or Bottom wall, choose Left jamb, Right jamb, or No door leaf. For doors on the Left wall or Right wall, the choices are Top jamb, Bottom jamb, or No door leaf.

Furniture

Use the plus and minus controls to set quantities. The list uses standard footprints from the room layout designer catalog and shows each piece's width and depth in inches. Each room type has its own starting list and per-item limit.

Example: Checking a bedroom arrangement

A renter selects Bedroom and keeps the default Feet setting. They leave the room at 14 ft wide by 16 ft deep, review the Bottom wall door and Top wall window, then adjust the furniture quantities to match what they own. After selecting Show my layout, they review the recommended arrangement, turn Walkways and Clearance zones on or off as needed, check the fit messages, and open the finished plan in the room layout designer if they want to continue editing.

How the layout recommendation works

The assistant converts Feet to internal inches with feet × 12. It converts Metres with metres × (100 / 2.54). Room dimensions are checked against 72 to 480 internal inches on each side, and the room is represented as a rectangle. Opening locations and the selected furniture footprints are then sent to the layout search. The search tests arrangements for overlap, furniture outside the room, door-swing conflicts, and circulation. Walkway rules are weighted most heavily. Access paths are checked on a 6 in grid, with 30 in treated as the minimum path and 36 in treated as the preferred path. The assistant runs the search with seed 1, 4,000 iterations, and alternatives set to 1.

Reading the results

The Recommended arrangement panel shows the suggested furniture positions in a room diagram. Walkways and Clearance zones are checked by default and can be shown or hidden. What fits summarizes the selected room and furniture setup with fit statuses. Placement rules provide room-specific guidance. When access checks are available, the result labels a path as 36 in preferred, only a 30 in path minimum, or no 30 in path blocked. If a piece cannot be placed without overlapping another piece or blocking a door, it appears in an alert with suggestions to try a larger room, fewer pieces, or a different door position. Use Open in room layout designer to continue editing the saved plan.

Limitations and common mistakes

• The assistant uses a rectangular room and standard catalog footprints. It does not provide custom furniture dimensions or an irregular room outline.
• Switching units converts and rounds values. It does not preserve physical sizes exactly: Feet values round to the nearest 0.25 ft, and Metres values round to the nearest 0.05 m.
• The room-size error message displays rounded metric limits of 1.85 and 12.2 m, but the internal accepted limits are 1.8288 to 12.192 m.
• Clearances are common interior-design guidance, not building code. Check local requirements for egress and accessibility. Saving to the room layout designer depends on browser storage being available.

Frequently asked questions