Last week Dael & I were thrilled to be part of an interactive interior workshop in Auckland run by Farmers, in conjunction with Your Home & Garden, using their new homewares range. Editor of Your Home & Garden magazine, Shelley Ferguson, worked together with the Farmers buyers to create this fantastic range inspired by the latest trends and our New Zealand lifestyle.

At the workshop guests had the opportunity to ask us questions about interior design, and time and time again the topic of furniture placement came up. It seems many of us have open plan spaces and multiple doors and windows, which is great for letting in natural light and creating spacious homes, but it can be tricky to know where to place your furniture when you don't have a lot of solid walls. Never fear, there is a solution...

It's seems to be a common mistake for people to think they have to push all their furniture up against the walls of a room. In fact pulling your furniture into the room can create a much cosier arrangement. This works particularly well when there are a lot of doors and windows that you don't want to block. To help ground the arrangement place a large rug under your furniture, it will suddenly feel less like it's floating in the middle of the room.

If you don't have a lot of extra room, simply pulling your furniture a small distance away from the windows, creating some breathing room, will do the trick.

Natural light is immensely favourable in your room, so try not to block it with your sofa. If, by moving your sofa away from the window, it means the back becomes a feature, consider placing a low table or storage unit in front of it to deflect the attention.

You could also try looking to your other rooms. A dining table is more than happy to sit in the centre of a room, so the lack of a solid wall is less of an issue. Can you swap your living and dining rooms around? A pendant light hung over the centre of your dining table will help to define the space.

We're heading down to Wellington and Christchurch this week for two more workshops, so I look forward to reporting back on more solutions for tricky interior spaces. If you have a question you would like us to help you with, drop us an email, it may make a great blog post.