How to Design a Room Partition for Your Home

Room partitions are a wonderful way to make a large space more intimate or create privacy in a shared bedroom. There are several ways and reasons to divide a room. Most often people want to divide a room into two separate spaces, but sometimes that room needs to be large again for gatherings. Temporary or mobile partitions are good for this.

Things You'll Need

• Tape measure
• Pencil
• Paper

Instructions

1. Measure out the room's current proportions and the desired proportions. Make careful notes of all measurements, light fixtures and outlets in the room. You have to know where the lighting and electric supply will come from for both sides of the divided room.

2. Determine what kind of room partition you need. Permanent partitions can be a full wall. Movable partitions can have rollers, wheels or even hang from the ceiling. Other options are heavy bookcase-type partitions that act like permanent partitions but can be moved at a later date if needed.

3. Map out in pencil what you want your room to look like with just the partition, no other furniture. Add all the details you can see in the room: light fixtures, outlets, ventilation sources, doors and windows. Take everything into account before you determine what kind of partition you need.

4. Sketch a design of what you want the partition to look like, and make sure you still have access to everything you need in a room. Be sure to consider ventilation: If you design a partition that limits air flow, you can disrupt the temperature of the room, making one side warm in the winter while the other side stays overly chilly from lack of air flow.

5. Graph the design to scale. Include all the measurements and make notes for supplies and tools you may need. This will help you complete your plan, or give detailed plans to a handyman you can hire to build the partition for you.

Tips & Warnings

• Look at room partitions in furniture stores and online to get some ideas of possibilities for your room partition. A Web site like Nextag gives you a list to compare.

Resources

• Visit the Nextag comparison shopping site for room dividers.