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You want to float furniture? Do we want to float it?

Girl, no.

No?

No, because what is that even...

That is going to look so weird in my place.

Apparently, no.

I mean, it's an optical illusion that you actually have a little more square footage if everything's not up against the wall. You can do it like three to five inches. It's not like you put it in the center of your living room. If you go to an open house where they've staged it, you'll notice that they never put all of the furniture up against the wall. They always do it like just a little. It gives you the feeling of more space.

All right, reporter Andy Tagle, coming in straight away with the tips. I'm Mariel Seagata,

and today on Life Kit, we're talking about how to make a small space feel bigger.

Apparently, and I would say counterintuitively, leaving space between your furniture and the wall is one way to do that.

We'll see. Maybe I'll try it. I will say I'm in one of those moments with my apartment right now where I'm looking around and I'm like, it's time to change everything.

Oh, yeah.

Even though I think it's cute, you know, like it's time for a new paint color, it's time for a new couch or whatever.

But I think part of that is, as my life has changed, I want to use this space for different things.

And especially in a small space, one room does have to perform multiple functions. And then you have to think about like, what is my priority here?

I have a word for you. The word is zoning. And the idea is that you can have, even though, even if you have just one space, if you have an open floor plan, zoning just means like you can zone off different areas of the open floor plan. There's no reason why you can't have a dining room and a living room and a kitchen and a movie area, all in that one open room.

All right. Well, coming up on this episode of Life Kit, we're going to talk more about floating your furniture. We're going to talk about zoning, about floor arrangements, about how to

hang your art. Lots of low budget and non-permanent solutions to make your space you're wrong.

That's after the break.

Okay, Andy, what do we need to think about when we're designing small spaces specifically?

Like, how's it different when you're trying to make a studio apartment or a one-bedroom your own versus a three-acre farmhouse or a 10-room mansion?

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