Virtual Room Planner

A virtual room planner is a vital tool for anyone trying to make a multi-functional living space. Let’s face it, if you’re in the market for a futon, you are either crunched for space or desiring a versatile room that can convert from living room to bedroom and retain the conveniences of both. Using a virtual room planner will allow you to decide the right size of furniture, as well as the best positioning of your futon.

Why Use a Virtual Room Planner?

A virtual room planner is very useful for futon buyers, as it allows you to visualize the amount of space taken up by your futon in the bed and sofa positions. This is crucial, as you’ll want to be sure that the futon can be opened and used easily.

Use a virtual room planner to verify the following:

• Make sure that the futon has enough room to extend into bed position. For a full size futon, this is about 78″ of depth. If your virtual room planner allows you to resize a sofa, change the depth to about 54″ to simulate an opened futon (the last 24″ are leg space).
• If your futon requires you to convert it from bed to sofa from the side, allow yourself at least 2 feet of clearance on one side to do so. If your futon is going into a corner, you may want to use a matching end table to create a balanced look.
• If furniture like end tables or coffee tables must be moved, use a virtual room planner to be sure that they have a space in the same room that is logical and useful. This will create a more inviting feeling.

Best Virtual Room Planners

The following virtual room planners are the easiest to use and we think are the best for home decorators.

HGTV Virtual Room Planner

The HGTV virtual room planner has a very simple interface and a lot of easy to configure options. While there is no rendering option, the top down view gives you everything you need to create an award winning design. Clicking on the menu to the left changes what clicking on the room view does, and your design will probably turn out the best if you resize the four walls they provide you, and then insert doors and windows as needed from their “Structural Items” menu. Also be sure to right click on any items on the floorplan of your virtual room planner to discover some nifty options that really allow you to customize your floorplan.

Lay-Z-Boy Virtual Room Planner

While it might not have been the first place you looked, the virtual room planner by Lay-Z-Boy furniture is much easier to use and has a slick interface that makes it very fun to use. We recommend using the “generic” furniture tab to build your room. The technology behind this tool is very advanced and prints much larger pictures than the HGTV virtual room planner, however resizing, building in additional walls, and rotating objects can be difficult as the furniture does not automatically snap into place. If you use the blue “I” button attached to each element, you’ll find that you can manually type in size and rotation, similar the the HGTV room planner’s right click menu.

Both of these virtual room planners have what you need to create a winning design that compliments the dimensions of your futon.