Design the furniture of a principal room with the room: the chairs, settees and stools covered in the stuff of the walls or the bed, the tables and glasses drawn to the architecture of the piers and the chimneypiece, so that the room and its furniture are of one manner and one date.
The Regency room: the furniture in groups
In the room of the Regency and after, bring the furniture out into the room in groups for the occupations of the company: a sofa by the fire with a sofa table before it, a round table in the middle with chairs round it, the pianoforte, a work table, a couch; leave the walls for the pier tables, the cabinets and the bookcases.
Repton set two pictures side by side: the old parlour, its company sitting stiffly in a circle round the fire, its chairs against the walls; and the modern living room, where the company is scattered through the room, one at the pianoforte, others reading at a table, at the sofa, by the window. The change came about 1800, with the breakfast parlour and the library used as living rooms.
The round centre table and the sofa table, both new pieces of the time, are the signs of it, and the sofa moved from the wall to the fire.
Related rules
In the formal room, stand the furniture against the walls and leave the middle of the room clear: a pier table (with its glass above) between each pair of windows, the sofa facing the fire, a chair either side of the chimneypiece, the chairs ranged round the walls in a line with the dado, to be brought out when wanted and put back after; and keep each wall symmetrical about its middle, its chimneypiece or its windows.
In a spacious dining room, stand the sideboard on the end wall, 5½ to 7 feet long, 3 feet high and 28 to 32 inches deep, and set a pedestal at each end of it carrying a vase: the one pedestal lined to warm the plates, the other a cupboard, the vases holding water or knives.
Furnish each room in the taste that suits it: the modern (French) taste, carved and on cabriole legs, in the drawing room; the Chinese, with fretted backs on straight legs, in the bedchamber and the lady’s dressing room, especially one hung with Chinese paper; the Gothic in the library.
Furnish the dining parlour with solid, substantial mahogany, without trifling ornament, and the drawing room with the lightest and most elegant furniture in the house, in satinwood and painted work, in keeping with its decoration; the library with bookcases and a library table, the bedchamber with what serves sleep and dressing.
Build on a single grid of 24 feet, set by the 8-foot spacing of the roof ridges and the size of the largest pane of glass, so that every column, girder, sash bar and pane is one of a few standard parts that can be made by machine, delivered and bolted together in any number.
pane 49 × 10 in · ridge 8 ft · bay 24 ft · spans 24, 48, 72 ft · 1,848 × 408 ft · tiers 24, 44, 64 ft
Cite this page Chris Paton, “The Regency room: the furniture in groups”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/grouped-arrangement. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.