Setting a scene at furniture fairs

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stand types; room scenes are resolved on the custom side

Stand types

Setting scenes, not lining up products

The most common mistake at a furniture fair is lining products up parallel to the aisle. A sofa arranged that way looks like shop stock; its scale, texture and the room it belongs to do not read. The buyer does not buy the product, they buy the room the product makes. Put that same sofa on a rug, beside a side table, against a coloured wall, and it becomes a different product.

Instead, build two or three room scenes. Each gets a wall, a floor texture, a lighting character and a limited number of pieces. Completing each one beats adding more: four half-finished scenes are weaker than two finished ones. Splitting the scenes across different user profiles also communicates the breadth of the collection.

The gaps between scenes are walkways and should be at least 120 centimetres. The visitor will step in, turn round, sit down and sometimes take a photograph. Narrowing the walkway turns the scene back into a shop window. At the stand design stage those walkways are drawn before any furniture, and the furniture follows them.

Floor and ceiling carry the feeling

A hall gives you a concrete floor and steel trusses ten metres overhead. You cannot build a domestic feeling out of those two surfaces. On a furniture stand the floor finish is therefore part of the argument rather than decoration: timber-effect boards, short pile carpet, or textures that change from scene to scene. A change of floor also draws the boundary of a scene, separating two rooms without a wall.

Closing the ceiling entirely is not always allowed; venues limit solid ceilings because of smoke detection and sprinklers, and some halls require separate permission once the covered area passes a given share of the stand. Perforated or framed partial ceilings lower the space and define the room without crossing that limit.

A lowered ceiling also carries the lighting. Pendants are the fastest-working element at a furniture fair: one pendant over a table turns that table into a dining room on its own. Keep the colour of the light on the warm side; neutral white shows the product accurately but makes the space read as an office and undoes the association the buyer came for.

Display that gets sat on

Furniture is not chosen untested. Visitors sit down, open a drawer, work a hinge, lean on an arm. Setting the stand up as an exhibition to be looked at is the biggest obstacle in front of the decision. A sofa with a rope across it is worse than no sofa at all: it tells the visitor the product is fragile, and a member of staff then has to explain it away.

The price of this is wear. Light upholstery is marked by day four, edges get scuffed, mechanisms loosen. So the pieces sent to the show are not chosen as pieces to sell afterwards; keeping a dedicated fair set ends the same argument every season. Spare cushion covers and a touch-up pen go into the crate as well.

A daily routine is needed: straightening cushions each morning, lint-rolling the upholstery, closing the drawers left open, running a brush over the rug. It takes five minutes and, unless somebody owns it, it does not happen. On-site technical support during the show, part of our exhibition stand services, covers this kind of work as well.

How many room scenes should we build?

It depends on the floor area, but few finished scenes beat many unfinished ones. Each scene needs its own wall and its own light.

How do we make it easy for visitors to sit?

By removing ropes and warning signs. Leave the scene open at the front, let the rug step into the aisle, and keep staff from standing over it.