Worked room · 11 × 13 ft
Dining room that fits until people sit
Eleven by thirteen. The table fits. The occupied table does not.
On paper the table has clearance on every side. In use, four pulled-out chairs eat the route behind them, so the person carrying a dish has to ask someone to stand up. The room is measured for an empty table.
What Room Lab concluded
Buy nothing yet
moderateMovement 79Movement is what is wrong. Move the largest piece once — no money yet.
- Why
- Movement is the primary friction at 79. Movement scores 79. How people walk: pinch points, blocked routes, and whether a body can pass. Function at 73 is real, but it is not the thing a body hits first. The primary walk measures 30" at its narrowest, 6" under the minimum. Addresses congestion and scale mismatch with a measured cause behind it. It costs nothing, takes about 45 minutes, and is undone in a minute.
- Caveat
- Unnamed: whether the table leaves can come out permanently; whether the sideboard is doing a job that a wall shelf could do. Function at 73 is close. If that score is wrong, the sequence may swap.
- Next
- Shift the sofa, island, or bed off the crossing. Live with painter's tape marking the old footprint. Do not buy a new piece this week. Measure: Primary path ≥ 36". Conversation or work still functions.
This holds until: The “Move the largest piece once” step is complete and a second reading shows what changed.
Driven by Movement score (79). Moderate — enough is scored to rank, and the top two are close or something is unnamed.
Free moves first
Clear the primary walk
Remove anything that is not furniture from the walk. Bags, mail, laundry, the chair that became a hook.
How to tell it worked: A body walks it without turning the shoulders.
Give the seats something to look at
Move whatever stands between the seat and what the room is arranged around, or turn the seat. Both are free, both take a minute, and one of them is almost always enough.
How to tell it worked: Every seat that is used has a clear line to something worth looking at.
Then one reversible test at a time
One reversible split
Place a folding screen, a tension curtain, or a planted trough on the line between the two jobs. Live with it for seven days. Do not also move the bed in the same week.
Measure: Can you do job A without seeing job B? Time the walk around the split — it must not pinch 36 inches.
Move the largest piece once
Shift the sofa, island, or bed off the crossing. Live with painter's tape marking the old footprint. Do not buy a new piece this week.
Measure: Primary path ≥ 36". Conversation or work still functions.
Planted edge as a wall
Three sides. Two can be plants in pots. One chair with a back against the third.
Measure: You stay for twenty minutes. The body feels a room.
Not worth buying yet
- Another rug before the walk is clear. Rugs do not fix circulation. They hide it.
- Hardwired statement fixture. Electrical is a watch or professional review is required. Prove the path with plug-in light.
- Decorative storage cubes for the pile. A lid is not a sort. Empty the pile first.