Step 5: Learn How to Design Furniture for Woodworking Projects

1. Look for existing furniture design ideas

There are very few original furniture designs out there. Most furniture designs that you see were at least inspired by someone else’s earlier furniture design. I always start my furniture design process by looking at existing furniture pieces. For ideas I either visit a museum or look at photos of furniture, both antique furniture and modern furniture. I look at furniture that is pleasing to the eye, and that has the correct proportions for furniture. Here are some free resources that I use for furniture ideas:

• Google Image Search: This is usually where I start, because I can enter a term like “antique trestle table“, and then click the “images” tab in Google, and I can scroll through thousands of beautiful photos until I find just the right look that I’m going for. And quite often if I click through the image, I’m taken to an antique auction house, and I find multiple high-resolution views of the furniture piece.
• Museum furniture databases: An amazing free resource that I’ve found is searchable online furniture databases at museums or living museums. One of my favorites is the Hancock Shaker Village database (here). Another one is the furniture database at the Colonial Williamsburg museum (here).
• Pinterest furniture photos: I’ve also found some nice furniture designs that woodworkers and furniture lovers have pinned to Pinterest. You can visit my Pinterest boards here to see some of the furniture that I’ve saved.
• Others? Please comment below if you can share some other great resources for free furniture design ideas.

2. Make a Rough Sketch of the Furniture

Once I find a general furniture look that I like, then I’ll visualize where that furniture piece will reside, and consider how I’ll modify the dimensions to fit my space, being careful to maintain the eye-pleasing general ratios of the original furniture piece. You can read this Fine Woodworking Magazine article PDF on designing pleasing furniture proportions.

My goal is to customize the actual sizes to fit my spaces and to maximize aesthetics and comfort. If I’m building a book case, for example, I will actually measure my books to make sure my big coffee table books will fit.

3. Make Technical Drawings or Woodworking Plans

Most of the time I stop at the previous step, and start building my furniture from a rough sketch. But occasionally a piece of furniture is more complex and requires more detailed woodworking plans and a cut list.

Such is the case with a complex project, like the above Portable Moravian Workbench (you can see our Moravian workbench plans here).

Also, if you are building furniture for a client, it is way easier to make a technical drawing to show them so they can visualize the furniture and make changes to the design before you actually build the furniture piece.

You can find the woodworking plans for this Cherry Shaker Hanging Cupboard that I designed here.

Conclusion | Design Furniture for Woodworking

So that’s basically a simplified version of my process to design furniture for woodworking. If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below. And in the next of the 10 Steps to Getting Started in Traditional Woodworking, you can Learn how to Choose Stable, Strong, & Beautiful Wood (Step 6).