A bed positioned in front of a window offers a layout solution in a bedroom with numerous doors.

Some bedrooms have numerous doors to contend with when you're trying to arrange the furniture. Ignoring these doors is a design recipe for an awkward and inefficient furniture layout. When you open a bedroom door that bumps into a bed, dresser or chair, you can damage the furniture, as well as the swinging door. Professional room-arranging secrets can help you situate furniture in your bedroom with lots of doors to create a functional, aesthetically pleasing design.

Space Guidelines

When you create a furniture layout that adheres to space guidelines recommended by professional interior designers, you set yourself up for a better-functioning bedroom with smooth traffic flow patterns. For example, allow at least a 2-foot clearance around the bed for ease in getting in and out of bed and for making it. Leave a 3-foot open area in front of glass sliding doors and bi-fold closet doors. Avoid placing furniture in a path that would hinder a standard, swinging bedroom door from opening or closing. You should leave a 2-foot 6-inch minimum space in front of a chest of drawers or dresser to allow ample room for opening and closing drawers.

Create a Furniture Layout

Create a pencil sketch or computer-generated floor plan and furniture layout for your bedroom. This allows you to position your bedroom furniture in various arrangements without physically moving the pieces to random locations. You can design a layout that's to scale by measuring your bedroom's length and width and transferring those dimensions to a piece of graph paper or computer design program. When using graph paper, assign one graph block to equal 12 inches. Be sure to measure each door, window, recessed area, built-in and fireplace and include those items in your sketch. Mark the location of electrical wall outlets, light switches and permanent light fixtures as well. Next, measure each furniture piece for your bedroom and draw an outline to scale of individual items on a separate piece of graph paper. Cut around your "paper furniture" and play with various arrangements on your sketch while adhering to recommended space guidelines. If you're using a computer design program, create furniture pieces to scale with your actual pieces and insert those into your electronic sketch.