Calling all home decorators & tetris experts - help me redesign my bedroom

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ve lived in this apartment for 7 years, and am finally getting it repainted next weekend. Since I need to empty out the room in order to paint/clean, this seemed like a perfect time to give it a new arrangement (and I’m sick of the current arrangement, so definitely want some kind of change). I really am not very creative when it comes to this stuff (I pretty much try to find a way to fit everything in a way that works, without that much extra creative thought), although my room has had 3 arrangements, and I’m ready for a fourth, so I was hoping that someone with a better eye could offer some ideas.

Here is my current arrangement, and here is the PSD version with each object as a layer, if you want to try digitally rearranging it yourself. Everything is to scale in that. All dimensions are in feet unless otherwise specified.

Keep in mind that I am totally willing to get rid of some of my furniture, but the last thing I want to do is add MORE to my room. If you can think of better ways to utilize some of these (like the tops of the bureaus, etc) please share too.

My main goal really is to get away from the wall that my door is on. This is the noisiest side of the room (it was even worse when my bed was there, rather than my computer desk). I figure this would be a good place for my wardrobe/bureau/bike/bookshelves/etc, and maybe my instruments. I also need to figure out a set up that would keep my TV within view when I am sitting at my desk.

This is what I have (sorry this is so long, but I figured it’d be better to provide more info rather than less):

The room itself is 11 feet by 16 feet, with a ceiling of about 10 feet. One corner has a door which swings in, which is the way in and out of my room from the rest of the apartment. There’s another set of double sliding doors which go into my roommate’s bedroom, but we don’t use those except for moving furniture, so they can be blocked and considered another wall (although there is a 6 inch incline from doorway to doorway). Across from those doors are two windows, 3 feet wide and 8 feet tall, each with a metal radiator in front of them (which have platforms on top of them so that objects may be stored without catching on fire). The floors are wood, but I have an 8 by 5 feet red rug, which I would prefer to keep in front of my computer desk so that my chair’s wheels aren’t constantly moving around.

The room does not have any lighting fixtures, but I have two lamps (one of which has a pretty wide shade). I prefer to keep one on each side of the room in order to maximize the lighting, and one within arm’s reach of my bed. One annoying thing about my entire apartment is placing of outlets. I have one pair near my door, another pair near one of the windows (half of which is used for my A/C during the summer), and 3 sets side by side in another corner. I do have a bunch of extension cords and APC surge strips, so I can run them to get power in most of the room. That same corner also has my cable line, which goes to my cable modem (and has cables running under the sliding doors to provide internet to the rest of the apartment)

I have a double bed, which measures 6.5 by 4.25 feet, with a frame, box spring and mattress. I also have risers for the feet, which gives me 13 inches of storage space under it. Most of that space is filled with large tupperware crates, and there are also a couple of computer accessories being stored. My current setup is the first one here where I had open space on both sides of the bed, which certainly makes it much easier to make the bed and get stuff from under it, but I wouldn’t object to having it against a wall again.
My computer desk is 3 x 2.5 and contains two 24" monitors, my keyboard & mouse, and the center speaker for the sound system. It also requires a couple feet of open space in front of it, for my chair, and I would really prefer to not store anything underneath it (aside from my UPS surge protector). One of my monitors also doubles as my HDTV, which I do most of my TV/Bluray watching on, but the rest of the time serves as my secondary computer monitor. It is important that I have a view of these monitors from my bed, but the angle isn’t critical.

I have a standard size tower case, which is 18 inches by 8 inches and 18 inches tall, which is currently sitting next to my desk. It needs to be within a couple of feet of my computer desk, within 9 feet of my printer and within 6 feet of my audio receiver. It doesn’t matter to me if it’s on the floor or on top of something, but I’d like to be able to reach the CD tray from my chair.

I have two short tables which I usually kept side by side, but they can be separated. The first is the “laptop desk” which has a bizarre shape (see the photo link) and is 1.75 x 2.5. The lower tier is where I sometimes set up my laptop (which very seldomly gets used at home - I mostly use it for scanning and running media compressions, and various things which I don’t want my main computer to handle), and the upper tier is where my audio receiver is (which all 5 of my speakers, as well as my computer and DVD player connect to).

The other table is the “printer table” and is 1.75x1.75, and my HP Laserjet 4 printer fits snugly underneath it, leaving the table top open. Right now I have my scanners on top of it, and it serves as the actual night stand where I usually keep my phone, journal, books, or whatever else I need when I am in bed. This needs to be within 9 feet of my CPU in order for the cable to reach.

I have two bureaus.
The first (which I call the clothes bureau, because every drawer has clothes in it, which get switched in and out twice a year), is 3 x .1.75 x 4.75 and has 0.75 empty space at the bottom which is where I keep most of my shoes.

The second (called the TV bureau) is 2.75 x 1.5 x 4, with no empty space at the bottom. It has 5 drawers, all of which contain pretty much everything EXCEPT clothing, and seriously needs a cleaning. I am considering getting rid of this one. On top of it I have a 19 inch standard def TV, attached to my DVD player/media center - this TV is not hooked up to cable and I ONLY use it for playing DVDs/media files, usually when I’m in the middle of a project which requires both of my HD monitors and want to have something to watch in the background. If I do get rid of the bureau, the TV/DVD can get moved to another place, but I must have a good view of it from my computer desk, as well as from my bed. The DVD player must be within 6 feet of the audio receiver (and within 10 feet of the TV, but those can be in opposite directions)
I have a 3 x 2 x 6 wardrobe. Since my room doesn’t have a closet, this is where I hang all of my clothes. It also has a shelf above the rack (which at the moment is where I throw my winter accessories, and my belts/ties, as well as a couple feet of space at the floor which I never quite figured out the best way to utilize).

I have two bookshelves. The first is 2.5 x 1 x 6 and contains books. The second is 2 x 0.75 x 3 and holds my DVDs, mostly in binders. It has my front right speaker on the top (and a little bowl where I usually throw my keys and wallet, since it’s right next to the door).
I have a 3 drawer nightstand which is 1.25 x 1.25 x 2. Like the TV bureau, the drawers have random unorganized stuff in them and it mainly serves as a stand for one of my lamps. This is another piece of furniture which I could easily part with.
I have three multi-drawer tupperware sets, each of which is 1.5 x 1 x 2.5. These can be stacked, but if placed side by side can make a small desktop space (I used to keep my audio receiver on top of two of them, and before that my guitar stand). Yet another thing which is mostly full of random stuff (even though I actually made an effort to organize these into various categories) and could be gotten rid of if I threw out a bunch of stuff and moved these into the under-bed crates.

I have 2 keyboards (the smaller one can sit on top of the larger one), and the stand for it is 4 x 1.25, but will need a couple of feet of open space in front of it where I can sit - I sometimes keep a fold up chair in front of it. In the space underneath the stand, there is room for my amp on one side, and my accordion on the other. I also have a guitar + stand with a footprint of 1x1 - in the past I have stored this on top of other pieces of furniture. I barely use the guitar so I could just put it away in a gig bag I have and get rid of the stand.

Sometimes, usually during the winter or when I’m going to be away from home for a while, I keep my bike in my room. It’s 5 feet long and the handlebars are 2 feet wide.

And even though it’s two of the smallest things I have, I can never find a good place to keep my garbage can (1.25 x 0.75 x 1.5) or my laundry hamper (1x1x2).

As mentioned above, my room has a 5.0 surround sound system. I would like to keep the center speaker near my monitors, and then would have 1 speaker near each corner. I have two wall-mounted shelves which can be used for hanging two speakers near the ceiling (right now they are on the wall opposite the computer desk for the 2 rear channels), and my front speakers are sitting on the radiator (L), and the DVD shelf (R).

I also have a bunch of posters (some are framed) which can go on the walls, but I don’t even want to worry about those until all the big stuff is in place.

And for further reference, this is the layout I had in my room from 2003 to 2006, and from 2006 to 2008.

Thanks for everyone’s help, those who actually kept reading to this point. I’m of course open to all suggestions, from “I think xxx should go yyyy because zzzz” down to a complete redesign.

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I’m still tackling your picture to see if I can come up with anything better, but I wanted to throw this out there… I think it’s kind of funny that the ad I see (as a guest) for this thread is one for Murphy beds! That would make design easier!

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Since my bed pretty much has to double as a couch in my room (which is one of the reasons I wouldn’t mind having it against a wall again, since I have enough pillows to make a decent back when sitting sideways on it), going murphy’s is out. How much space do those actually save, since you still need to have to keep empty floor space in order to roll it out?

When I was writing up this post last night, I was going through some old photos…and I found some from when I first looked at this apartment. My room was being used as the living room before I moved in, and basically just had a TV (in the corner with the cable hookup), a loveseat between the two windows, and a recliner in the corner. It seems SO much more roomy by not having nearly every inch of wall space covered with furniture. I’d really like to convert to something like that (and no, there aren’t any other rooms I can convert into my new bedroom/computer room here, and our current living room, which was being used as a dining room by the previous tenants, is pretty full).

4

One thing I’ve found helps in this sort of situation: Go vertical. You have way too many short pieces. You can get a lot more use per square foot out of taller pieces, freeing up floor space. Especially if you have 10 foot ceilings!

Can you mount bookshelves on the wall? A couple of sets of wall-mounted shelves would allow you to ditch both bookcases and possibly hold some of your “random crap,” stored in some sort of decent-looking bin. Also, you could use a wall-mounted lamp.

If you don’t want to buy a lot of new stuff (understandable), maybe you can experiment with stacking existing pieces, like a bookcase on top of a dresser. It might well look okay.

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I’d really like to avoid too many wall-mounted items, since my landlord is a bit anal about leaving behind holes in the wall, and after all this IS a new paint job (which is about 10 years overdue, as you can probably tell from some of those photos). I did already let him know that I would probably be hanging up my speaker shelves again (which are just big enough to hold a 6x6x12 inch speaker each) and each need 2 standard size screws.

Also keep in mind that I will likely want my comp desk near the center of whichever wall it is on, in order to maximize the circle of sound.

One of the problems with having 10 feet ceilings is that I’m 5’11 and have an arm reach of another 2 feet or so above my head, so anything aside from the speaker shelves would be out of reach for me and therefore useless if I piled up to the ceiling. I could put one of the lamps high up (on top of the bookshelf or wardrobe) and put it on a power strip, so I could turn it on and off from the switch - do lamps work better for distributing light when they are high or low in a room? Now that I think of it, the only good reason I’ve kept my lamps lower is so that it’s easier to reach the switches, and one of them takes up an incredible footprint.

I’m also considering what things I can stack. There’d be room on top of either bureau for my tv or those “tupperware” drawers if I put them side by side. Those drawers could also go on top of the wardrobe, but would be hard to reach without a chair.

The DVD shelf is about the same height as my computer desk, and also about the same width as the length of the desk, so it could fit nicely sideways next to it, assuming it was in a spot where I had access to the side.

I’ve pretty much decided that the little wood nightstand and the “tv bureau” have outlived their welcome, and probably won’t be joining room 4.0. Having those extra, unorganized drawers around just encourages me to clutter and hoard. The TV will probably have to be relocated to either the top of the clothes bureau, or the top of the DVD shelf although I don’t think it’s big enough to hold it. Anything else would be too high or too low for my field of vision.

A set up which I had in my dorm back in college was with the bureau (this was school-owned furniture, not what I have now) against the back of my desk, with the TV on top of it, which basically put my TV above my monitor. This set up would mean that my comp desk wouldn’t be against a wall, but “floating” in the middle of the room along with the bureau. There’s also the possibly of putting my desk with the side against the wall, and the bureau behind it but with the back against the same wall, but that would also conflict with the circle of sound.

6

Get a loft, or something similar. If you want to use your bed as a sofa, you can leave it on the floor, but a bunch of stuff can go up there. You can surround the with three- or four-foot book shelves, have some carpet and a couple throw pillows up there, add a lamp, and have a reading nook. (Add the TV if you must.) That will leave you more room on the main level.

You don’t have to put the bed/sofa underneath, either. You can put the loft at (say) five feet, and stick the bureau and other storage underneath it. You can put up curtains to have a more private area under there (a place to sweep the mess, for example).

7

Lofts are awesome for tight spaces, but that actually isn’t my problem. I actually have a quite large room, and now that I have officially emptied out and removed the TV bureau and nightstand (if anyone wants to come to Brooklyn to pick them up, they’re yours for the taking!) I will have even more. It’s figuring out the most appealing usage of this space that makes me crazy.

BTW, I tried stacking my bookshelves. The smaller one actually fits snug on top of the larger one, but it leaves me with an 8 foot tall bookshelf, with 2 high shelves I wouldn’t be able to reach without a chair. There’s even enough room between the top and the ceiling for one of my speakers.

8

Do you need a DVD shelf? Those things always annoy me. I guess maybe because I’m the sort of person with a small DVD collection that doesn’t get used much. I feel no need to display my discs and I don’t need them readily available.

Is your bed off the ground? If so, you could flip the DVD shelf on its back and slide it under your bed. If it’s not you can spend $40 and get a bed frame. Or go industrial and put your bed on cinder blocks.

As for the bookshelves…do you really need ready access to whatever is on the top 2 shelves? Storing something out of reach is not the same as throwing it away forever :slight_smile:

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Yes, the DVD shelf I definitely do need. As you can see from the photo, my DVDs (and other media) are pretty much all in binders, and I have A LOT of them. I access these constantly, so they would have to stay at a easily reachable level. I suppose if I did stack the bookshelves, I could put the books that I don’t touch much (aka most of them) at the top in the smaller case and keep the binders on a lower shelf of the big one. The 8 foot tall shelves…on the one hand seem awesome, but on the other hand seem a bit TOO practical, especially now that I’ll have a bit more free wall space. It would probably be a more efficient use of space if I put one of the lamps on top of the bigger bookcase instead.

Yes, my bed is on a frame and on risers, which gives me about a foot of storage space underneath. It’s already utilized mostly by larger tupperware crates, which is mostly stuff I don’t need to access very often.

BTW, I love craigslist. I posted a curb alert this morning for the dresser & nightstand, and they were gone 10 minutes later.

10

This site: 2020 Icovia | Online 2D Space & Room Planning Software has a pretty neat room-layout tool. I’ve used it to plan moving the furniture around in my son’s room (though we haven’t implemented the changes yet).

You can move stuff around, resize it, etc.

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Sweet site! I love that kind of stuff. I was the only kid I knew in middle school who bought home designing software to build, furnish and otherwise play with houses.
You said the radiators can have stuff on top of them, so I would suggest putting the DVD shelf, tupperware drawers or bookshelf on top of that. Otherwise, that space is just wasted. I know you wouldn’t want to put a guitar on top of them because the heat can damage it, and I would recommend keeping that and the keyboard on the opposite side.

Also, on a side note, Murphy beds can have things like collapsible loveseats and desks on them when they’re folded up. It wasn’t a suggestion for your room; it was just the ad that came up when I was looking at this post. I wasn’t saying to get a Murphy bed, but they do have some cool features.

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I can’t tell from your description. Would the bed fit, same orientation as it is now, between the radiator and the wall, to the left of where it is now? With no outlets in that corner, it seems it would make more sense to put something like the bed, rather then computers/TV and have to stretch all those cords around.

13

Yeah, except that the two windows are each behind the radiators, and I’d really prefer to not have them blocked - a couple of small things are fine (one of my lamps is sitting on the radiator closer to the door, and it puts a bright glow through it that can be seen from the street) but I don’t want to get carried away. Plus the other window (next to the outlet) is where I put my A/C in the summer.

There wouldn’t be enough space to put it against the wall with the windows, but I did have it in that corner oriented the other way, with the back to the wall with the door when I first moved in. It was horrible - I got woken up early almost every day from the sounds of the front door being slammed (the entrance to the apartment building is on the other side of that wall.

Thanks for all of the advice, everyone. I have a couple of really good ideas here, and I’m really looking forward to the new room, once the painting is finished this weekend.

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The site does allow you to email a link to the layout, fusoya - so if you want to play around with different variations and then send the link to yourself, and post it here, folks can really visualize some of the changes.

Heh heh heh… I’d gotten to that site via Stumbleupon, and immediately laid out a reformatting of my son’s bedroom. His bed is currently against a wall (PITA to make the bed), and I discovered we could re-arrange it so that it’s accessible from both sides, and have an overall much better layout. We put it against the wall as an impulse on move-in day 7 years ago and hadn’t rethought it since then.

So we told him that tomorrow is The Day when we’re going to re-arrange stuff. Honestly, I think he’ll LOVE it, but he’s grumbling about it right now. Autistic 15 year old, doesn’t like change at all. He said “don’t I get a say?” and we told him “well, no”. If he truly loathes it, we’ll see, but I really think he’ll be pleased once he gets used to it. We’ve sort of promised him a larger bookshelf if he sticks with the new layout.

15

Another room design tool (actually this appears to be a whole house layout tool). once you set up the room it looks like you can add furniture etc.

dragonfly.autodesk.com/designer

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Okay, I gave that site a try…it’s a lot nicer looking than the boring-but-practical layout I made in photoshop.

Here is my current layout. A note that the TV in the corner used to be on top of the other bureau which I gave away - it’s pretty small so needs to sit on top of something (probably the remaining bureau or maybe the DVD shelf or back half of the laptop desk). Also, both of those lamps are table top. The two speakers on the right side are on shelves mounted near the ceiling - these shelves can be remounted some place else if that corner doesn’t have something to put the speaker on. The wardrobe has sliding doors, so doesn’t need as much space in front of it as a swinging one would. Also, the printer is UNDER that desk. On top of the desk I have a scanner and other little things.

I ideally want to get both my bed and my computer desk towards the right side. I have a pretty good idea with putting my desk where my bed is and putting the bed in the upper right corner, or putting my desk in the upper right corner with my bed against the right wall. The trickiest part is finding a new place to put my TV, since I don’t have many things I can put it on top of.

Anyone who wants to give it a try (the link will load my current room where you can move around and rotate objects - all have been resized to their actual dimensions), please post a link here if you come up with something good. I need to have these ideas finalized by Saturday.

Thanks again for your help and advice.

17

Ugh, I tried that second site which Mama Zappa suggested, but the inability to resize furniture defeats the entire purpose!

18

It seems to me that once you stick the bed in the corner, and the desk between the radiators, the rest just flows naturally.

I just jammed stuff where it fit. It may not be practical to have a keyboard next to a radiator or a lamp where there’s no power socket, but that’s personal choices.

19

Ah -sorry about that! I didn’t even try to do anything with the site, just literally stumbled upon it (stumbleupon.com). The first one seems to have worked better for you, I guess!

GuanoLad, there are certainly advantages to the layout but I can point out one major impractality: having the bed in the corner, with one side against a wall, makes bedmaking a REAL pain in the keister.

We just moved to this plan, after having his room laid out like this since we moved into the house (a hasty layout decision when the movers thought they’d have trouble fitting in all the furniture). Having the bed against the wall makes it a real pain to make the bed - we literally have to stand at one end, drag the mattress half off the bed, and wrestle the sheets into place.

My son hates the new layout. This is because in his mind, All Change Is Evil. He’d have been fine with it if we’d done that from the start.

Oh, and yes, there is a dresser in the closer. With the new layout, he could have had it out in the room but he has very few hanging clothes, so there it stays!

20

With the TV in the corner, sort of behind that one thing (what IS a bunching table anyway?), will it even be visible? I seem to recall you said you usually use one of the monitors as your TV so this may not be an issue.