No piece of furniture should force a detour

In any interior, you follow daily routes without knowing it. From the bed to the bathroom, from the sofa to the kitchen, from the entrance to the bedroom. These routes are almost always the same, and they take the shortest possible line.

If a piece of furniture sits on this line, you go around it on every trip. Five times, ten times a day. After a month, you have walked around it a thousand times. You no longer notice it consciously, but your comfort suffers.

The professional rule, no main piece of furniture should force a detour. The furniture must adapt to the routes, not the other way around. This rule is complementary to rule 04.9 on observing your lines of desire, which proposes the detailed observation method.

The 48-hour observation. For two days, note (mentally or on paper) every time you walk around a piece of furniture. If the same piece keeps coming up in the list, it is badly placed.

Mentally trace the main lines.

From the entrance to the living room. From the entrance to the kitchen. From the sofa to the TV. From the sofa to the kitchen. From the living room to the bedroom. From the bedroom to the bathroom. From the kitchen to the dining area.

These seven lines represent 80% of your daily circulation. No large piece of furniture should sit on them.

Common solutions.

If an armchair blocks the passage from the sofa to the kitchen, move it.

If an entrance console encroaches on the entrance-to-living-room line, fix it higher on the wall or choose a slimmer one (see rule 03.15).

If the coffee table forces a detour to reach the sofa, you may have placed it too centrally.

Special case, the "useless piece". Sometimes, the piece that forces the detour is one you no longer use (an unused chest of drawers, a decorative side table). The best solution is often to remove it, not to move it.

Small interior case. In a studio or one-bedroom flat under 35 m², every centimetre counts. A badly placed chest of drawers can turn a functional studio into an obstacle course. The rule, fewer pieces, but well placed. Prefer two genuinely useful pieces to five of which three force a detour.

Interior designers always begin by tracing the lines of desire before any layout plan. It is the first step, before drawing the furniture.

Pierre Yovanovitch often says a room "works when you do not think about moving in it". It is that invisible fluidity that distinguishes a well-drawn room from one where you are constantly hindered.

In renovations, the first question to ask after the structural work is, "How do I circulate between the rooms?". The furniture comes after that answer.