Cup Half Full: Decisions Decisions

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Decisions Decisions

Don't hate me for this post, but I really need to think out loud about the layout of our room. ~~Hi my name is Becky and I'm an over-analyzer.~~

As I try to plan for our bedroom make-over, I'm on the fence about re-arranging the furniture. As it stands, the room has a few REALLY annoying features that are making it difficult to decide on a layout I'm happy with. We have a very inconveniently placed steam heater that comes out of the wall a solid ten inches... so that's awesome. Not only do I not want the heater blowing directly on us in the middle of the night, but I don't like the idea of the bed sitting so far off the wall with that awkward gap. That means that that wall is out.

The wall between the bathroom door and closet door is not nearly wide enough for a bed, so that's out as well. That leaves the wall between the windows and the wall directly opposite.

This is the current set up of our room:

In this set-up, the bed is directly to your left when you walk in, so there is a direct pathway to the bathroom. I actually never even had to think about the layout when we moved in - our movers put the furniture in the room this way, and since it made sense, I left it. Now I'm on the fence about whether or not we should switch it up.

Here is the other layout I was thinking of...

The main problem I see with Layout II is that when you come into the room, you walk directly into the bed. I also don't like that the bed can be seen from the living room, and I don't like that it obstructs the flow for guests that need to pass through the bedroom to the bathroom.

Now that I've said what I don't like, let's move onto what I DO like - In all my "dream rooms", I love when the nightstands line up with the windows, and the bed is nestled between - it creates really nice symmetry, and "frames" the bed. In the current set up (Layout I) I do not like that our bed and nightstands are up against a blank boring wall. I don't really know what to do to make that "emptiness" behind the bed and nightstands go away.

The other problem is that, the closet door swings wide open into the room (even though I keep it closed when I'm not using it), so the area right outside the closet has to stay empty so we can open the door up. You might be wondering what the problem with that is?? Well, in order to keep this space open for the closet door, the bed and nightstands are no longer perfectly centered on the wall - they are just off to one side, and not lined up with the windows on the opposite side of the room... am I totally losing it or does it matter? (I think it matters).

Now that I've got it all down on paper, there seems to be more con's to switching to Layout II than there are to keeping it as is, but even so, I'm still not loving how it looks, and I feel stumped for ideas. I'm hoping that once the paint is on the walls, things will feel less empty, but I'm kind of at a loss!

I saw several rooms that used tall mirrors behind the nightstands and lamps to open things up, and give the feel of windows, but how many mirrors do we really need in one bedroom? Remember those existing Quadrefoil mirrors? Should I get rid of those for now and store them for another time? Should I seek out longer window-like mirrors and try something like this? It looks great here, but I really hate the idea of abandoning my quatrefoil mirrors!!