Design Your Home with Smart Furniture

Smart furniture is one of the latest trends in the home interiors industry. It has multiple facets, the most popularly spoken of being, space-saving furniture. The concept of smart furniture can be categorised into four parts.

Space saving

The very purpose of space saving furniture is to reclaim space. There are various kinds like the invisible bed, four-seater coffee table, extendable dining set, etc. With this provision, when in use, you can just pull down/out the product and when you’re done using, you can push them back inside and reclaim the space created.

Multi-functionality

Let’s take the example of the foldable bed that can also be used as a study table. Does it save space? Yes. But it also provides a multi-functionality when not in use. All you need to do is push the bed back up to open-up the study table. Technically, the same space is being used for two purposes – study table by day, a bed by night.

Context

A smart design approach involves the designer looking at the user’s current needs and dislikes and, framing the most customer-friendly product.

Let’s look at entertainment units. An entertainment unit is an aesthetic, visual frame for a TV and the equipment around it. With the trend of ‘Netflix and Chill’, the olden days of gathering around the TV are gone. Urban and nuclear families probably sit next to each other and watch Netflix, Hotstar, or Amazon on their phones or tabs. But it is still considered as spending time together.

But do we not want to watch the World Cup on TV – call friends home and make it a night? Most definitely. Entertainment units have gotten smarter with this shift. All the wires to the TV, setup box – long gone.  Now we just have a single wire strip behind the TV which is also mounted on the wall. We don’t need a home theatre system for music – a single soundbar does the trick. Given the changing entertainment needs, we don’t need the extra space; we have gone from a four-piece TV unit to just two pieces.

A place for everything

With spaces coming closer and the ability to acquire more increasing, we need to organise better. The saying ‘A place for everything and everything in its place’ needs to find better applicability in our lives. Furniture isn’t an outer covering for things, we need to take a step further – what goes inside, how it goes inside, maximum utilization of space, sustainable and maintenance. Wardrobe these days have internals meant for women’s evening gowns and men’s suits without having to fold them, like in the earlier days.

Smart interiors are wiser. It’s not a shortcut, but being wiser in approach in using space, and thus develop furniture around it.

This article is contributed by Basob Majumdar, VP-Designs, HomeLane.com

The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of RoofandFloor.