Getting ready to host overnight guests? Let’s assume you have a bed or air mattress and coverings on all the windows. That’s a great start! This list will help fill in all the little things your guests will want to have on hand for a comfortable night’s sleep. What you won’t find is season-specific decor, extra charging cords, books and other optional extras that your guests might enjoy, but can live without. Instead lets focus is on versatile, key pieces to get your guest space up and running so you’re ready for visitors, no matter when they arrive.

Water Carafe

Needing a glass of water but not knowing where to get one can be frustrating and uncomfortable for guests. And after traveling by car or plane, they probably need to hydrate. Be prepared with a glass carafe filled with water, and add an extra glass if you’ll be hosting a couple.

Coordinated Set Of Bedding

Since your guest bed is probably used far less often than the master bed, there’s no need to go all-out with top-of-the-line bedding, unless you want to. But a good-quality set of sheets and a quilt or duvet in a coordinating hue will make your guests feel well cared for. A neutral palette will look appropriate year-round.

Bedside Lighting

Good lighting is key to making your guest room feel welcoming. At minimum, place a lamp on each bedside table — lamps with three settings are ideal, so guests can adjust the light levels to suit their preference.

Full-Length Mirror

Your guests will appreciate having a simple full-length mirror propped against the wall or attached to the back of the door. If the mirror is in a dark corner of the room, draping a strand of white twinkle lights on it is a quick and inexpensive way to add a warm glow.

Extra Blankets And Pillows

Help your guests out by providing a few extra blankets and pillows so they can get comfortable. This is especially important on chilly winter nights, but if you have central air conditioning, your guests may reach for an extra blanket even in summer.

Wastebasket

This is a small but important detail that will help your guests keep their room neat without making frequent trips to search out garbage cans in other parts of the house. Whatever you opt for, choose an attractive wastebasket that enhances your guest room style.

Extra Toiletries

Have a few spare sample-size toiletries in a drawer? Gather them together in a pretty bowl or basket and add a new toothbrush so guests won’t stress if they forgot something.

Bath Towels

A stack of fluffy white bath towels on the bed is a welcoming touch. Be sure to include a wash cloth, hand towel and bath towel for each person.

Wall Hooks

Unless your guests are staying for a week or more, they probably don’t need an empty dresser to unpack their clothes into. A few sturdy wall hooks will do for hanging damp towels and with the addition of a hanger or two wrinkle-prone outfits.

Coffee And Tea Makings

Considerate guests won’t want to bother you if they get up before you do. Including a little tray with everything they need to make a morning cup makes it clear they are welcome to help themselves.

If you’re lucky enough to have a fireplace in the corner of your living room or family room, you know that it can be both cozy and confounding. You might wonder how you should orient your couch and rug. And where should the TV go? Doorways, tight square footage and other variables can make those decisions even harder.

These rooms feature fireplaces built at an angle in the corner. Check out how home professionals and homeowners approached this common design challenge and read some helpful tips. Then, if you’ve designed around a corner fireplace, tell us how and post a photo in the Comments.

Arranging Seating 

Sofas and Chairs 

A fireplace is an architectural focal point — and furniture is usually directed toward a room’s focal point. So why is it hard to find a couch facing a corner fireplace?

While every room is different, designers often advise against that layout, since it causes a couch’s corners to stick out awkwardly in the room, impeding flow. Instead, orient a couch and rug parallel to a wall. A chair or chairs can then be placed at an angle.

Hot Tip: 

• Draw it! Map how you think you want your furniture arranged and how traffic is likely to flow through the room. Then make sure large and sharp-edged pieces of furniture aren’t in that path.

Another Option: 

Place two chairs or a loveseat facing the fireplace and at 90 degrees in relation to the couch, to create an L shape. A feature wall, facing the couch, is a secondary focal point.

A room could have a second seating area, which is a nice addition whenever space allows. An armchair next to the fireplace, paired with a side table, creates a cozy reading spot that can still feel connected to the conversation area.

The furniture placement in a living room with a large opening into adjacent rooms can be challenging, as the busy travel path goes right through the middle of it all. To keep the path as clear as possible, scale down a rug, chose tailored pieces and push the couch and chair against the walls.

Hot Tip: 

• Swivel chairs let you change your orientation from the conversation area to the television or the fireplace.
• You’ll want at least 3 feet of width for paths of travel. If there’s a rug in that path, opt for a thin flat-weave and make sure there’s a nonslip pad underneath.
• Rounded furniture, such as circular coffee tables and rounded-back chairs and sofas, also deemphasizes angles in awkwardly shaped rooms while being easy to navigate around.

Sectionals

An angled sectional is conducive to conversation, but it can create a pleasing continuity with the angle of the adjacent fireplace.

Placing a chair directly in front of a fireplace is best avoided if possible. But it can work if the fireplace isn’t frequently used and the chair is visually light and easy to move out of the way.

Hot Tip: 

• In a small room used mainly for conversation, consider omitting a couch altogether. Instead, group four comfy club chairs around a circular coffee table in front of the fireplace.

Adding A TV

On The Adjacent Wall 

Optimal TV viewing height is eye level when the person is seated, and heat and electronics don’t mix. So placing a television above a console or a built-in entertainment unit versus above the fireplace mantel is often the best solution.

Because the fireplace and the entertainment center are on adjacent walls, those seated on the couch can enjoy both. Two additional chairs opposite the couch can be placed so they don’t block the view but do allow for conversation.

Even though the television becomes the dominant focal point an angled sectional can help to invite the fireplace into the furniture grouping.

On Another Wall

Doorways, windows and other architectural elements also can leave few places for the television. But wherever the TV ends up, the seating arrangement ideally will allow for comfortable viewing of both it and the fireplace.

Hot Tip: 

• A neutral, monochromatic palette keeps a room with multiple focal points from looking cluttered.
• Echo the materials and design of your fireplace surround in other elements of your room to create a cohesive look.
• If your room’s proportions allow it, place the longest side of your sectional toward the focal point you want to emphasize.
• Another way to avoid the big-black-box look is to use a Frame television, which resembles artwork when it’s off.
• When you have a corner focal point, populate the room’s other corners to create symmetry and balance.

Above The Fireplace 

The concept of placing the TV over the fireplace sparks a lot of debate in the design community. If you have a low, linear fireplace that doesn’t emit much heat, or if your seating is far away from the set, it can work well. But the configuration can be bad for your TV and a pain in the neck — literally and figuratively.

But there’s no denying that installing a television above the fireplace is popular, and it has the advantages of being space-efficient and creating a single focal point in a room.

Hot Tip 

• If you’re still scratching your head about where to put the TV, consider a pull-down screen and a projector.

Placing A Rug

Rugs are great for grounding conversation groupings, but they can conflict with hearths and draw attention to awkward angles. A round rug, resolves the “In which direction should the rug go?” question.

Hot Tip: 

• Organically shaped rugs, such as hides and sheepskins, faux or real, and multiple rugs layered to create asymmetrical shapes also can help to ground a seating arrangement and add softness without having a distinctive directionality.
• Designers usually advise having all furniture legs, just the front legs or no legs at all on top of an area rug.
• Wainscoting or built-in cabinetry can help to spread out the visual heft of an ornate fireplace so the room feels more balanced.
• If you have a wood burning fireplace: prevent sparks and embers from lighting your rug on fire, place the rug at least 12 to 18 inches away from the fireplace and invest in a pretty fireplace screen. Flame-retardant hearth rugs are available as well.
• Read: 11 Area Rug Rules and How To Break Them

Material price increases, product delays and subcontractors in high demand — remodelers are experiencing pressure from all sides at the moment. Choosing products early, seeking advice from your builder or designer, and being flexible with your selections are key to keeping your budget in check and your project on track.

The Impact Of Price Increases On Projects

The price rises have affected renovations enormously. Projects that are valued over several million dollars can take two years plus for the build. Building materials, deliveries and trades have gone up about 35% in the last 2 years.

The increase in interest rates and in products and materials is changing the renovation and building industry. Rather than choosing just one product supplier for a project, which was previously often the norm, most clients now want two quotes, giving them the option to choose more cost-effective products.

International shipping delays, the tripling of container prices and port fees, and a drop in raw material supply have all contributed to a rise in project costs. Locally, delays due to lockdowns and transport issues, along with reduced staffing capacity, have also played a significant role.

Price rises have impacted the overall build and renovation costs for homeowners, which flows down to the budget for finishes and fixtures. Builders have had to adjust the materials they might typically use in favor of comparable products that are more reasonably priced and accessible. For example, if an Italian tile had been your first choice, maybe tiles that are available locally are more reasonably priced and have a shorter lead time. 

How To Keep A Lid On Project Costs

◦  Work closely with your builder and engineer during the design phase to limit additional costs. This allows you to get input on all aspects of the design.

◦  Find a builder and book a spot in advance with a good lead time between signing the contract and build commencement. Waiting means your builder can plan and book trades and order materials in advance.

◦  Choose fixtures early like appliances, windows, doors and plumbing fixtures so they are available and ready in time for the build. Making selections at the last minute will often mean less choice, higher costs and poorer-quality items.

◦  Buy and source materials locally and domestically to reduce waiting times.

◦  Choose ready-made cabinets, bathroom vanities rather than having them custom-designed. A large number of companies produce attractive off-the-shelf products at a fraction of the cost of custom styles. They are limited in sizes, but a good designer will make them work in your space.

◦  Be flexible so you can pivot and adapt to changes, price increases and delays with an alternative plan or substitution.

◦  Work with experienced designers who knows the best products at the best prices and who understands warranties and where to purchase them. Using an designer will ensure you can avoid estimates from your builder for specifications that you can have a fixed-price contract on, which avoids variations.

◦  Be patient on the timelines of your project. This allows your builder to get multiple trade quotes and means you’re less likely to be stuck paying a premium price for super-busy trades.

◦  Stage your build. Work with your builder and establish whether nonessential work, such as nonessential cabinetry, can be completed at a later time.

◦  Consider a smaller initial remodel but work with an architect or building designer to create a master plan that can be executed at a later stage. Staging a build doesn’t mean the project is less expensive overall –—in fact, it often means the project will cost more in the long run — but it can enable homeowners to get some of the most urgent work done in manageable pieces.

◦  Be open to sharing some of the price increases with your builder. This can help your builder finish the project and not feel pressured to cut corners.

Garage dimensions have remained about the same for many years: 9 to 10 feet wide, 2.8 to 3 meters and 18 to 20 feet, 5.5 to 6 meters long per car, with a single garage door width of 8 feet, 2.4 meters. The difference in garage dimensions now is that we tend to want more space for storing our stuff along with the car.

It seems that car designers are always enlarging, shrinking and then enlarging their models again to adjust for the latest fashions and technologies, not to mention the price of gas. But there are common parameters that will help you in planning a new garage or remodeling an existing one.

If you have ever scraped your car alongside a garage door frame, you will sympathize with your ancestors, who may have driven even larger cars. Let’s take a look at the dimensions of most garage designs today.

Garage Door Dimensions

Width: 

Single-car doors begin at 8 feet wide, 2.4 meters. You can also get 9-foot-wide doors, 2.7 meters, which will lessen the chance of scraping the fenders on the door frame. 

Doors made for two cars can be as little as 14 feet wide, 4.3 meters, but are more commonly 15 or 16 feet wide, 4.6 or 4.9 meters.

Height: 

The standard garage door height is 7 feet, 2.1 meters, but an 8-foot, 2.4-meter height is also available. You can get a custom height for an additional cost.

Two-Car Garage Dimensions

The single 16-foot-wide, 4.9-meter-wide garage door is large enough to allow two cars to fit and is a common configuration. It is also a good idea to have a 3-foot-wide door to the exterior on the side of the garage. As for the door going into the house from the garage, you will want it to be at least 32 inches, 81 centimeters wide.

Hot-water heaters and mechanical systems are often placed in the garage. If this is done, it is best to create an alcove, or add more depth or width to the 20-foot minimum to accommodate that equipment.

Three-Car Garage Dimensions

A three-vehicle garage common dimensions for just cars is 32 feet wide, 9.8 meters and 22 feet deep, 6.7 meters . Add more space for built-in cabinets or be willing to have a tighter fit.

Common Vehicle Dimensions

Leave at least 36 inches, 0.9 meter between cars so that you can open their doors without hitting another car door. You can go slightly less on side walls, but be certain you can comfortably enter and exit your car.

Vans and SUVs:

◦  Width: 6 to 7 feet / 1.8 to 2.1 meters

◦  Length: 16 to 19 feet / 4.9 to 5.8 meters

◦  Height: 5 to 6 feet / 1.5 to 1.8 meters

Large and Luxury Cars:

◦  Width: 6 to 6½ feet / 1.8 to 1.9 meters

◦  Length: 16 to 18 feet / 4.9 to 5.5 meters

◦  Height: 4½ to 5 feet (1.4 to 1.5 meters

Compact and Sports Cars:

◦  Width: 5 to 6 feet / 1.5 to 1.8 meters

◦  Length: 14 to 16 feet / 4.3 to 4.9 meters

◦  Height: 4 to 5 feet / 1.2 to 1.5 meters

Other Garage Considerations

Storage

Garage cabinet systems have similar dimensions to those in kitchens. You can buy base units that are 24 inches, 61 centimeters deep, but some come in depths of 12 or 18 inches, 30 or 45 centimeters as well. Coordinate these with the dimensions of your car so you will know how much space you can use for storage.

Stairs

Steps that go directly into the interior of the house are ideal. Steps with 6-inch, 15-centimeter risers and a platform or stoop are ideal; it is best to keep risers under 8 inches, 20 centimeters. Make sure you find out about local code restrictions and be certain to follow them.

Bumpers or Curbs

Having a curb opposite the garage door will keep your vehicles from running into the facing wall. If you make it 4 inches high, it will be low enough so the front bumpers don’t scrape. Even if you have an existing garage with a level floor, you can find bumpers to mount onto the floor to solve this problem.

Driveway

Driveways to the garage can eat up considerable space on your property. Balancing one with your home’s design takes careful planning.

Most will simply be in a straight line from the street to the garage, but if you are planning a motor court, consider that the turning diameter for a car is between 40 and 50 feet, 12.2 and 15.2 meters. You need at least 25 feet, 7.6 meters to comfortably back up and then begin a turn to move forward.

Zoning and Regulations

Many zoning and building codes have minimum dimensions for garages, so be certain you know those when planning your design. Local building codes also address door hardware, protection of the mechanical systems from cars and garage door openers, so consult a design professional to be sure you are covered for these issues.

Garage Door Design Ideas

Be generous with details around garage doors. They are usually prominent features on a house simply because of their scale. You want to complement your architecture while paying close attention to the scale of other elements on the house.

Details and good proportions help elevate design. Two single doors often look better than one wide door, because the proportions coordinate better.

When a double door must be used, consider the design. Multipane windows and appropriately proportioned panels can complement the home’s design. Save double doors for contemporary architecture in which horizontal lines dominate the theme.

Also consider your garage‘s relative height to the finished front view of your house so as not to take away from the architecture and streetscape. While this solution is likely on the upper end of budget parameters, you should consider how the dimensions of your garage will affect the aesthetics of your house. Using single doors rather than double, setting the face of the garage back from the primary elevation and blending the design of the doors into the building are just some tricks to keep your garage proportions from overtaking your house.

Like a blank page or canvas, an empty room can be either an opportunity or a challenge. With so many ways to fill it, how do you know where to start? Here are some of the basic rules of furniture arrangement in 10 simple tips. They’ll help you to determine where to put things, where not to put things and how to prioritize the choices you make.

Think About Room Function

Consider how the room is used and how many people will use it. That will dictate the type of furnishings you’ll need and the amount of seating required.

What Is The Focal Point

Identify the room’s focal point — a fireplace, view, television — and orient the furniture accordingly. If you plan to watch television in the room, the ideal distance between the set and the seating is three times the size of the screen, measured diagonally. Therefore, if you’ve got a 40-inch (1m) set, your chair should be 120 inches (3m) away.

Start With Priority Pieces

Place the largest pieces of furniture first, such as the sofa in the living room or the bed in the bedroom. In most cases this piece should face the room’s focal point. Chairs should be no more than 8 feet (2.4m) apart to facilitate conversation. Unless your room is especially small, avoid pushing all the furniture against the walls.

Consider Symmetry

Symmetrical arrangements work best for formal rooms. Asymmetrical arrangements make a room feel more casual.

Create A Traffic Flow

Think about the flow of traffic through the room — generally the path between doorways. Don’t block that path with any large pieces of furniture if you can avoid it. Allow 30 to 48 inches (76cm to 1.22 m) of width for major traffic routes and a minimum of 24 inches (61cm) if traffic cuts through the middle of the room, consider creating two small seating areas instead of one large one.

Aim For Variety

Vary the size of furniture pieces throughout the room, so your eyes move up and down as you scan the space. Balance a large or tall item by placing another piece of similar height across the room from it or use art to replicate the scale. Avoid putting two tall pieces next to each other.

Build In Contrast

Combine straight and curved lines for contrast. If the furniture is modern and linear, throw in a round table for contrast. If the furniture is curvy, mix in an angular piece. Similarly, pair solids with voids: Combine a leggy chair with a solid side table, and a solid chair with a leggy table.

Design For Ease Of Use

Place a table within easy reach of every seat, being sure to combine pieces of similar scale, and make sure every reading chair has an accompanying lamp. A coffee table should be located 14 to 18 inches (36 to 46cm) from a sofa to provide enough legroom.

Allow For Circulation

In a dining room, make sure there’s at least 48 inches (1.22m) between each edge of the table and the nearest wall or piece of furniture. If traffic doesn’t pass behind the chairs on one side of the table, 36 inches (91cm) should suffice.

In bedrooms, allow at least 24 inches (61cm) between the side of the bed and a wall, and at least 36 inches (91cm) between the bed and a swinging door.

Do Your Planning

Give your back a break. Before you move any furniture, test your design on paper. Measure the room’s dimensions, noting the location of windows, doors, heat registers and electrical outlets, then draw up a floor plan on graph paper using cutouts to represent the furnishings. Or, better yet, use a digital room planner to draw the space and test various furniture configurations. It’s less work and a lot more fun.