Rearrange your existing furniture to make the most of your space.

Create impact throughout your home that you can afford, in fact for free! The only cost is a little thought, energy and time, if you're looking for simple ways to improve your space.

Even though every home is different, there are some universal furniture arranging rules that can apply to many spaces — and when followed make them more pleasant and welcoming places to be in.

Place bulky objects furthest away from entry points.

Many of us want our rooms to feel as spacious as possible and potential buyers will also find this appealing. One way to control that feeling is by placing your bulkiest object at the furthest point from the entry to a room. What that does is draw the eye into the room, giving more of a view of the rest of the room, which will help make the space feel open and less crowded.

Don't crowd the entry.

In the same vein as above, try not to crowd your entry area to a room, whatever kind of room it is. Don't place bulky pieces of furniture in the way. Don't let items sit too close to the door or potentially be in the way of traffic flow.

Balance is key.

Although sometimes difficult to achieve in small spaces, you want to try and evenly distribute the visual weight of furniture throughout a room, making the space feel balanced. If you don't have a piece to visually mirror a heavy piece you might have somewhere in the room to incorporate bold or dramatic design elements that will balance out the visual weight, too.

Don't always line the walls.

Most of us tend to put furniture up against walls in rooms, it can seem like it makes sense, to create space. However, this can make a room feel surrounded and a little too airy in the middle. So pull furniture away from the wall. Don't be shy about using pieces as visual dividers to break the room into cosier seating arrangements and use side tables in more central spots.

Think about movement through the room.

This is tough in small rooms but not impossible. Everyone has furniture they need for function but always keep in mind that you also need to move freely around the space. Try to make it as smooth and obstacle-free as possible. A frequent mistake is arranging pieces so that they create too many ‘small’ traffic aisles between walls and furniture. The solution is to place furniture close to each other in ways that increase the size of main travel aisles in the rooms; this will create a more obvious and intentional flow through the space.

Every room benefits from a centre of attention.

And of course there’s the tried and trusted classic approach. Choose a focal point for your room, like a fireplace or a set of patio doors and arrange selected items of your furniture symmetrically around it. You might, for example, place a sofa so that it directly faces the focal point, then place two chairs forward and either side of the sofa, facing inward. Finish this off with a central rug and/or low coffee table to create an inviting social space.