From Fred Albert,
Your Guide to Furniture.
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One of the most common mistakes that furniture buyers make is not planning out a space before they start to furnish it. The result? Pieces that are too big or small for the room, blocked doorways and circulation paths, or groupings that are dull or don't take advantage of focal points or views.

But even if you can’t draw a straight line, you can draft a professional-looking floor plan using one of the easy-to-use programs available online. These tools are free and (with one exception) don’t even require you to download any software. You simply enter the dimensions of your room on a grid, then browse through an index of furniture pieces and drag the ones you want onto your plan. You can add architectural details such as doors, windows and fireplaces to help in your planning, then print out the results when you’re finished. Most sites will even let you e-mail the plan—very handy if you want to share your vision with an architect, decorator or design-savvy friend.

I spent a couple of days drawing up living room plans on 10 different Web sites. Although I possess only average computer skills, I found all of these programs (again, with one exception) very simple to use—even fun. Most first-time users could complete a room plan in about half an hour. And remember: Moving a mouse is a lot easier than moving a sofa.

Here are the sites I tried:

Jordan’s Furniture Room Planner

I had the most fun using the Jordan’s Furniture Room Planner. This Boston-based furniture chain uses generic furniture templates in their room planner, so you weren’t limited to a particular company’s designs. I found it especially easy to place furniture using this system, and was able to slide an area rug under the furnishings—a nice touch. The sytem also includes representations of people, pets—even slippers—so you can really make your plan look lived-in.

Bassett's Room Designer

Bassett Furniture provides Bassett’s Room Designer as a free service on their Web site. Although this is pretty much the same system as Jordan’s, I still found the latter slightly easier to use. Give Bassett points for providing templates of generic furniture pieces, and not just pushing their own products.

Bo Concepts' Decorate with Furnish

Bo Concepts’ Decorate with Furnish was the most difficult program to use and requires you to download a 21.1 MB file (a process that took about five minutes with my broadband connection). That said, the results were also the most impressive, offering not just floor plans but 3D renderings that could be viewed from different angles. One usually has to pay to get software this sophisticated, so hats off to furniture dealer Bo Concepts for making it available to anyone free of charge. Of course, the furniture templates only utilize the company’s own products, and lists them by name rather than appearance, so it’s a bit trickier picking out the pieces you’re looking for. But if you have the time and patience, the results are very impressive. Note: This program is not compatible with Macs.