Meeting a Homeowners’ Needs in Small Space

Posted in Feng Shui, Home Design, Interior Design, Lifestyle, Residential Design, Uncategorized on December 18, 2012

How do you make a small space look good, feel good, and support you in life?

Here’s some advice from our Designer Victoria Mott:

This small “efficiency” condominium is part of a luxury condo high rise in downtown Minneapolis, near the river.  It’s one of the smaller units they have available.

“Efficiency” means there are no official walled-off rooms, except for the bathroom. Everything else is in the same rectangular-shaped space.

The trick here was to make the space work like any other home, defining different rooms with different purposes. This helps create more boundaries in life. As you can see from this “Before” layout, our client did okay with the furniture arrangement, but she needed someone to look at the space more creatively.

She came to us for our expertise in melding Feng Shui and Interior Design, wanting the space to look good, feel good, and support her current goals in life.

From a Feng Shui perspective, my main concern was that the bed was placed directly across from the kitchen. That placement involves too much energetically happening directly across the room from the bed. (Not very restful.) It’s also in too close proximity to the front door. While it is nice to see a welcoming sofa upon entering a home, I wanted the bed to be swapped with the location of the sofa. Having the bed in further back in the space is more comfortable and safe for her, on a subconscious level.

As you can see from the “After” picture, we were able to create the feeling of a separate room with our client’s large clothing storage unit. I placed it between the sofa and the bed to create the illusion of walling off the room, and the actual barrier physically separates the two spaces.

Applying Feng Shui principles in a space such as this can be tricky, which is why it’s best to have a certified practitioner offer advice. While helpful, interpreting information from a Feng Shui book is not the same as getting information from someone who’s studied the ancient art. There are many subtleties that may not come to light until a practitioner has actually been in the space, gotten to know you, and what your needs and wants are. Then we can recommend changes to you space to help fulfill them.