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Furniture Arranger

LHJ's personalized and interactive Furniture Arranger series will help you make all the right moves to create a bedroom, home office and living room you'll love to live in. Now you can try out different floor plans on your computer-with no heavy lifting!

And, as you choose and place your furnishings, you'll get expert designer's tips and tricks for an efficient yet comfortable room layout.

What You Will Need

The free Shockwave 7 plug-in is needed to use this program. If you don't have Shockwave 7, go to the Macromedia Web site for downloading instructions. Close the Shockwave window when you are done to return to the LHJ Furniture Arranger.

The programs themselves are 270 K each and will take about 90 seconds to download with a 28.8 modem and 45 seconds with a 56 modem.

If you do have Shockwave 7, simply select the room you want to start arranging!

How It Works

Simple instructions will appear after you load each program, but here's a general overview:

Each room has two main screens. In the first screen you will be asked to enter the dimensions of the room and hit Begin.

The second screen is the designing room. There are two menus: one for furniture (like beds, desks and couches), and one for architectural items (like windows and doors).

Select the items you'd like in your room from the menu, then click that item and it will appear in the preview window above the menu. Put your cursor on the item in the preview window and drag it into the room.

With the tools in the bar below the menu you will be able to click and drag an item, rotate furniture, trash items you don't want, create a new room with different dimensions, clear the room of all items or view a Help page.

When you click on an item, our designer's tips for placing that piece of furniture will appear below the preview window. Follow the suggestions to create an arrangement that's balanced, conversation-friendly, properly scaled, well-lit and easily navigated.

Tips for Arranging Furniture

While you're placing your furniture, keep general these tips in mind:

• It is worth the extra effort to measure a room to be fitted with furniture carefully and draw a floor plan that includes architectural details. Today's furniture comes in too many different sizes and shapes to take chances, and space-related mistakes are costly. Even the best decorators and architects measure a space before starting.
• Create a wish list of items and pieces you want to incorporate, and include them in your plans. Don't just draw freehand what you think will work; measure each piece to make sure it will fit with room to walk around it.
• Keep in mind the traffic pattern in a room and the space between furniture. In general, the front of a piece of furniture should have at least 18 to 20" in front of it to allow enough space to be able to walk comfortably past it. Pieces next to each other can have as little as 4 to 5" of space between them, since you won't need to get between them.
• Always arrange the most important or largest pieces of furniture first, then fill in space with the next largest pieces to be sure everything fits properly. Then fill in with smaller pieces to complete.
• Every room should have an interesting focal point-either a fireplace, bed, desk or main window. Don't place furniture opposite a plain or uninteresting subject or area.
• Finding a balance in furnishing is very important. Once you have your largest pieces of furniture in place, balance the sides with nightstands, filing cabinets, pairs of chairs, or chairs and tables.
• Overscaled furniture in a smaller space can have a grand feeling. Keep in mind that if the room is a strong color, the fabrics on the furniture should also be strong, in order to lessen the contrast.

Printing the Rooms

Windows users:

Netscape Navigator: Click the "Print" button on the Netscape tool bar

Internet Explorer: Hold down the Alt key and press the "Print Screen" button on your keyboard.

Open Microsoft Paint or any other paint program. MS Paint comes installed on Windows and can usually be found under the Start Menu in "Programs/Accessories."

Select "Edit/Paste" from the MS Paint menu.

Select "File/Print" from the MS Paint menu.

Macintosh users:

In either browser, hold down the Apple and Shift keys, and press the 3 button. A screen capture will be saved to your hard drive as a Picture file. Open the file in SimpleText, then select "File/Print."