Importance of Custom Furniture in Interior Design

Custom Furniture is a modern design product. Custom Furniture matters the most when designing a place. This lesson describes how, why, and when furniture is essential in interior design.

 

Custom & Interior Design

Custom Furnishing matters to interior designers like titles to librarians. It’s crucial because interior design is involved with the design of spaces and what makes space is furniture. In this lesson, we’ll go over the different aspects of this ‘making.’

 

Function & Custom

Custom is an industrial or craft-based design to support human activities. Interior designers use existing furniture or new ones in types of ready-made, custom-designed, or built-in. Every custom furnishing is made with user needs and function in mind. The function determines what furniture should do like eating (tables), sleeping (beds), or seating (chairs).

 

The function determines what space should do, too. Analyzing how space will be used and what activities will take place at that space marks the programming phase of interior design where furniture is involved. The function determines which custom furnishings (appliances, fittings, and accessories) are necessary for the usage of space, too.

 

Perhaps custom furnishing matters the most when the design is implemented as furniture brings function to space. An excellent example of how furniture defines and dictates area would be airports. How would you know where to sit and wait in an airport? You look around for seating elements, right? Because furniture clearly states the intended function of the waiting/lounge area.

 

Space Planning & Custom Furnishing

Custom and functionality work together in the space planning stage of interior design, too. By definition, space planning is the division and allocation of interior space for the customer activities and needs. How to place the custom furniture is an essential part of space planning where the maximum method is considered in the arrangement and placement of custom furniture.

 

Also, space planning includes circulation. Circulation means leaving ample space for the human flow. For the best installation of space, furniture is placed to provide free movement. This makes the area around custom furniture as crucial as its arrangement. Thus, furniture works as a functional and circulatory element in interior design.

 

Equally important, custom furniture is a significant design element. Interior designers use furniture to establish a pleasing sense of order. They engage two- and three-dimensional design of the arrangement of furniture and consider the aspects of design such as shape, color, form, and texture.

 

The sources of design are used to custom furniture, too. For example, items are arranged by scale, size, and proportion; rhythm is employed by repeating custom furniture, unity by harmonizing custom furniture with other spatial features like a fireplace, or emphasis by using a custom furniture grouping as the focal point.

 

Balance becomes the primary consideration in arranging furniture because furniture affects the sense of equilibrium/stability in space. Let’s imagine a hotel lobby that all the furniture is placed only on one side of the area. How does this arrangement make you feel? Like standing on a sinking boat, right? But instead, interior designers seek for a well-distributed visual weight in space.

 

Custom Selection

Like arrangement, specification and selection of custom furniture and furnishings are an essential job duty of interior designers. This is recognized as FF&E (Furniture, Fixture, and Equipment) during which interior designers make custom furniture selections and provide a complete written description of the selected objects called specification.

 

In custom furniture selection, the activities and users are held first. Interior designers concentrate on the design of the custom furniture, the need for flexibility, adjustability, finish requirements, durability, and size. They accommodate social, emotional, or cultural values of their customers, too. Because furniture arrangement is an expression of personal styles as much as function-driven.

 

Also, interior designers select custom furniture that complements with their design idea. This needs custom furniture to be fitted in the spatial characteristics of the project. Thus, custom furniture makes an integral part of the concept (mood) board where the design idea is visually presented to the client.

 

Knowledge of Custom Furnishing

In selecting and arranging custom furniture, interior designers integrate a large body of knowledge. History is one of their information sources. Throughout history, custom furnishing styles are developed with specific characteristics of form, shape, and ornamentation. For example, the Chippendale style custom furniture (18th Century) is featured with the ball-and-claw feet and the contemporary furniture with a clean, sleek look. Identifying furniture styles is critical for interior designers as they design for different customer tastes and techniques in a kind of contexts and usage.