This paper addresses the impact of dialogue strategies and functional features of spatial arrangements on communicative success. To examine the sharing of cognition between two minds in order to achieve a joint goal, we collected a corpus of 24 extended German-language dialogues in a referential communication task that involved furnishing a dolls’ house. Results show how successful communication, as evidenced by correct placement of furniture items, is affected by: (a) functionality of the furniture arrangement; (b) previous task experience; and (c) dialogue features such as description length and orientation information. To enhance research in this area, our ‘Dolldialogue’ corpus (www.dolldialogue.space) is now available as a free resource.