Space Planning

Warning: You'll want to move your couch after reading this.

See them in real people’s homes, too!

Create more spaces with one of these genius room divider ideas.

Have you ever felt that a room was just "off" somehow, but you just couldn't place what it was?

Balance is a tricky beast when it comes to interior design. Some people love perfectly symmetrical spaces, and others are utterly bored by them. Wherever you fall, you’ve got to admit that a balanced space — in terms of color, visual weight, pattern and layout — is perfectly pleasing to the eye. But knowing how to get there takes trial and error. For some examples, I’ve rounded up a few spaces that with a tweak or two, could be perfectly in balance.

Could your living room use a bit of a shakeup?

A few lessons from real-life studio apartment layouts, created by real-life studio apartment dwellers like yourself.

Does your home feature a long, narrow living room, kitchen, hallway, bedroom or some other space? There are some decorating tricks and tips that can really help balance out a long and narrow space and make your room feel more visually balanced (and more comfortable to be in). Try one or more of these tips today. It’s not that you always have to match the shape or style of room you have when you’re looking for furniture.

Sometimes moving a chair, shifting a sofa, or re-orienting a bed is enough to give your home a whole new lease on life.

Living well in close quarters requires, among other things, efficient furniture placement. These studios, one-bedroom apartments, and one house show how you can make your home’s spatial quirks and shortcomings work in your favor.Studio apartments offer the obvious challenge of making one space function as several. In slightly larger apartments, the living room often works overtime as an office area, dining room, and entryway.

Plus four bonus tips for making the most of what you've got.

Great for small spaces, this less-often used layout is worth a look.

Tight corners, the space under your stairs, the tops of cabinets—these awkward spaces are the great equalizers of design. We all deal with some or all of these things in our homes no matter what our budgets look like. Money may certainly give you more decorating options, but sometimes ingenuity is really all it takes to conquer these tricky areas. Here are some ideas to help you tackle your “dead zones”.

A window niche is design feature many would welcome. While this naturally lit offshoot of a room appears dreamy and wonderful, it can also be difficult to furnish. Finding a balance between maintaining functionality of the space while also integrating it into the rest of the room can be quite a challenge.Here in San Francisco, Victorians with bay windows can be found at every corner.

When I was in college, my roommate and I got a loft bed system, and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. Not only did we have lots of floor space to hang out and study, I loved having the privacy and coziness of my own secret bed platform. For small spaces, a loft can be a great way to open up floor space, but even if you don’t feel you need the extra room, a loft can be a great hideaway for a kid.

When you’re busy working, it can be easy to let your workspace fall into a rut—I mean, who has time to redecorate their desk when they’re preparing for next week’s presentation? But because your work environment affects how energized you feel, taking a few minutes right now to optimize your workspace may just make your whole week more productive. Want to try it? Read through these five ways to improve and organize your desk according to feng shui—then get to work!

Do you live in a small space? Do people sometimes confuse your bedroom for a closet? Can you reach your kitchen sink from your couch? If you’re looking for ways to make your space more livable without spending a ton, you’ve come to the right place. Here are three classic ways to make living little work for you: 1. Lighting Small is one thing, but small and dark is quite another. Almost nothing has the power to transform the a room like good lighting.

Maybe you’re making room for a new baby’s nursery or that cave of collectibles you’ve always wanted. Or maybe you just like living small. No matter what your motivation is for maximizing your space, the best way to do it is by combining two functions into one room. Here are five classic double-duty room combos we see all the time, proving that when it comes to a thoughtful layout, you can kill two birds with one stone. 1.

One-click online shopping and free shipping has made the whole furniture buying process seem super easy and accessible. But what happens when you start unboxing pieces and realize you have absolutely no idea where to put them—or worse, whether they’ll even work with the rest of what’s in your room? Arranging furniture is really an art form, but the good news is there are several guidelines you can follow to help you figure out the process.

One of the most perplexing things about moving into a new place, especially a small place, is where to put the furniture. This apartment, with its curving wall of windows, presented a unique challenge. How do you create both a bedroom and a living space (and maybe a dining room and a study, too) in a place that’s so small, and so unusually shaped? We went to the drawing board to come up with a few ideas. First, an intro: This is an advice column.

Our homes have to host many different functions for our lives, from sleeping to cooking to lounging to working, and even sometimes entertaining. It’s hard enough living in a small home, but when that home is literally only one room? It can be tough to relax when you can see every inch of your home from your bed. But some of the most popular studio apartment tours this year showed you don’t have to let the lack of walls dampen your home or living style.

One of the challenges of living in a studio apartment, or in any space short on interior walls, is separating a space into different uses: sleeping, cooking, dining, lounging. It’s possible to do this in more subtle ways, like with rugs, but if you prefer to create more concrete divisions, there are ways you can make room dividers work for you (even beyond how you think they can).

Let's focus on another time-honored living room pastime: conversation.

In this space planning series, Layout Lessons, we’ll be exploring layout options for different bed sizes within various shaped bedrooms because things can get tricky sometimes. We tapped Eleanor Büsing, a contributing writer for Apartment Therapy and an interior designer in her own right, for her expert opinion on the matter. Here, how to deal when only a King bed will do.

Should you have one of the following four room shapes, consider these your cheat sheets for how to best arrange your queen-sized bed.

Furniture buying is hard; even harder still might be where to put it all and how to arrange a room. You might be inclined to just throw everything up against the wall, or set up your stuff the way your parents did in your childhood home. And though it might not seem like rocket science, the littlest tweaks in flow and placement can really make a colossal difference in the way a room feels and how you live in it.

If you’ve ever lived in an apartment, particularly a small apartment, this situation probably sounds familiar: you’ve signed a lease, you’re so excited about your new place, and then you realize—you have no idea where to put the furniture. And that’s where we come in. In this new column, we’re tackling the weirdest and most perplexing space planning solutions. Did the Room Layout Doctor do a good job of fitting everything in? You be the judge.

What if...you didn't put your bed on a wall at all?

Use a bedroom as a living room? An extra office space as a den? A closet as a bedroom?! Yes—though rooms come with “historical precedent” of how they were used in the past, it doesn’t mean you have to use a space in your home the way it was intended. Not only do you have permission to use your home any damn way you please—it just makes sense to do so. Why not craft a home that functions just the way you need?

Having a small living room can be a bit of a challenge, especially if you love to entertain. How do you fit in seating for all those people and still leave room to move?

I recently stayed in a traditional shotgun apartment in New Orleans with my partner and one of my best friends. If you aren’t familiar with the shotgun home layout, it’s typically long and narrow, and made up of rooms that are directly connected to each other, directing you through each room to get to the next. The layouts were very popular in the South (especially New Orleans), but are also common in New York and Chicago.

Beyond satiating curiosity, getting to see how different people tackle the layout of homes with the same floor plan is also illuminating. Do the same people have the same design challenges? Do they use space in the same way? Does architecture have a strong affect on the furniture and accessories selected? Tirsh and Minky share a lovely North Oakland loft with their dog Arnie. As the owners of Hunter & Lew, a design studio, having a home that fosters creativity is clearly important to them.

Here's a reminder to us all that good things—including genius design ideas—really do come in small packages.

A. Two sofas facing each other OR B. A sofa and love seat arranged in the traditional L-shaped arrangement?

So you have a huge open space on your hands? Great! Not so great is the feeling that it’s just one big, undefined area. Never fear. You can strategically use the things you already have to create separate zones and get your space organized. Try these tricks. Want something to look different than everything around it? Paint it a different color! It’s one of the easiest and fastest ways to create definition. Furniture doesn’t have to stick to the walls!

If you’re lucky enough to have an extra bedroom in your home, you might be getting some familial pressure to have a guest room always at the ready for out-of-towners. An extra bed is never a bad idea, but letting an empty room go to waste the other 51 weeks of the year seems like a shame. Maximize your space by turning that room into one of these things that you can appreciate all the time. Your guests will understand!

Even if your home is full of lovely things, you might, occasionally, feel the urge for newness. It’s only human to crave a little variety. But this doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s time to buy new things. You can get the feeling of a new home, without buying anything at all, by mixing up the things you already have. Here are seven ways to do just that. 1. Pull your furniture away from the wall.

Are you struggling with how to fit your furniture in the living room, and can’t for the life of you come up with a good layout? You might need to “float” your furniture — or pull everything out from the wall and create an island of sorts comprising your sofa, chairs and tables — and anchor it all with an area rug. What decorating magic is this do you ask? And how will you know if this is the answer?

I never fail to be impressed by the ingenuity of city dwellers living in itty bitty teeny tiny spaces. Especially now that I’m shopping for apartments in New York, and all I can think is… where do you put the furniture? Here are five apartments belonging to real New Yorkers who have solved that problem in creative ways, and managed to squeeze a lot of living out of a little space. I really like what Linsey’s done with a fairly typical New York studio layout.

Once upon a time, I was flat-hunting in London and found an adorable one. The location was convenient and the space bright and sunny. The problem? The bathroom was located off the bedroom, meaning that guests would have to go past my bed in order to use it. Here’s how to make the most of this sometimes awkward layout: Though I immediately discounted that flat, I’ve since discovered that this layout isn’t as ridiculous (or rare) as I once thought.

I just got the chance to see a friend’s new house, and the conversation during the visit turned to owning vs. renting. True to the “grass is greener” maxim, we each had bad things to say about our current situation.