In order to systematically analyze the current situation and shortcomings of street furniture in historical districts, the work aims to propose targeted street furniture optimization design methods to help improve the quality of street furniture in historical districts and highlight the regional characteristics of cities. From the perspective of perceptual experience, post-use evaluation (POE) was applied to establish the perceptual evaluation system of street furniture in historical districts and outline the important influential indexes of street furniture user perception. Through the quantitative study of SD semantic analysis method, user perception evaluation of various types of street furniture in Guilin's East-West Lane historical and cultural district was conducted to obtain objective evaluation results and provide reference for the subsequent design practice of street furniture. The shortcomings of street furniture design in the historical district are explored in five aspects:historical perception, cultural perception, formal perception, functional perception and spiritual perception. Through evaluation data, it is concluded that the street furniture in the East-West Lane historical district has the problems of insufficient historical and cultural perception, lack of functional structure perception and weak spiritual and value perception, and then specific optimization design methods and strategies are proposed for the activation of cultural perception, improvement of functional perception and enhancement of spiritual perception in street furniture. At the same time, it provides practical reference and theoretical basis for the optimization of street furniture in China's historical districts.