The first step to styling your dream living room in Singapore is to measure your furniture and room space. Measuring well will help you to design a most visually pleasing look and feel, plus create an optimal level of comfort and ease for you to live in. Having just the right distance between your coffee table and sofa, for one, lets you easily lean forward to reach for a cup of coffee or magazine, or kick your feet up nicely to watch your favourite movies. Before you head to the store to pick out the newest furniture for your living room, here’s our useful measuring guide to help you measure away!

Coffee Table to Sofa

Since the coffee table is the most central piece of furniture in the living room, it’s good to start here!

The coffee table is best chosen according to the size of your sofa, as they function as a close pair in the living room. You can start by measuring the height of your sofa (until the seat cushions) and its length. The height of your coffee table should be no taller than the height of the sofa, and best 1 to 2 inches shorter than it. Anything higher would make the furniture look awkward, and anything lower would make it difficult for you to use the coffee table comfortably. This means that a taller sofa would require a taller coffee table, while a shorter sofa works well with a shorter coffee table.

For length, the rule of thumb is to have the coffee table no less than ½ the size of the sofa and no more than ⅓ of it. This creates an aesthetically pleasing look and allows you enough space to move about between your sofa and coffee table.

Read: Using furniture to create your luxury dream home in Singapore

Depending on how deep your living room space is, choose a coffee table that can fill it up accordingly. A deeper space works best with a table with greater width, so that there’s not too much empty space between the coffee table and television. Longer width coffee tables measure about 32 to 48 inches, while shorter width ones measure about 19 to 31 inches. You can consider different coffee table styles, like rectangular, round, and nesting that are ideal for different living room depths; a deeper living room, for instance, could work well with an L-shaped sofa and a round coffee table – filling up the width of the living room space.

Accent Chairs and Side Tables

Accent chairs are usually placed either just around the coffee table or further away, snug in a corner of the living room. If your accent chair is far from the coffee table, you’ll likely have an accompanying side table to make it easy for you to set down drinks, books, and other things. A side table is often placed close to the accent chair. There’s no standard measurement for this – just a comfortable half arm’s length distance away is good.

Measure the height of the accent chair, from the floor to the arm, and from the floor to the top of the seat cushion. Your side table should be no taller than the arm height and no shorter than the height of the seat. With armless accent chairs, you can estimate a side table that’s no higher than 8 inches above the seat height.

Console table

Console tables are also known as sofa tables because they are often placed behind the sofa to section a living room into distinct spaces. You should measure the back of your sofa to determine the height of your console table. A console table should not be taller than a sofa’s back, or else it will awkwardly jut out from behind the sofa and break the flow of space in your living room. Console table lengths are flexible – just measure the length of your sofa’s back and make sure that your console table does not extend beyond that length.

Space around each furniture

Always make sure that you give enough space between your furniture for you to walk through comfortably, but not too much that you have to work hard to reach your cup of tea on the coffee table. The coffee table to sofa distance should be about 14 to 18 inches, just a nice distance for you to pick up items on the table, and enough room to walk around. Other seats around the coffee table should also follow the same rule. Apart from that, allow about 30 inches around furniture that you’ll need to walk around.

All in all, whether you’re living in a snug or spacious apartment in Singapore, making proper measurements of your furniture can help you create the most ideal, comfortable living space to live and relax in!

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