My Mom Made One Tiny Tweak to My Living Room and Made It Feel 10 Times Bigger

I recently moved into a new apartment that my roommate and I have to design and decorate from scratch. While it’s fun and exciting to have a blank canvas to make our own, the living room is proving to be quite a challenge.

It’s almost fully square, and just big enough to fit both a living and dining space. While this might sound nice—and it is—it’s so difficult to conceptualize splitting up the area. I spoke with a designer who helped me figure it out, but something still felt off until my mom came to visit.

Here’s how my mom helped us fix the living room with one tiny tweak, and everything else she left better than before.

How It Was Set Up Before

My mom has a really nice eye for design and aesthetic, a genetic trait my sister stole all of before I was even born. So, I was really hesitant to commit to a certain layout before my mom had a chance to see it in person. When she dropped in unexpectedly a few weeks after we moved in, I knew this was my chance.

As soon as she saw the space, she commented on how much smaller it seemed than when I’d shown her on FaceTime (thanks, Mom…). But it wasn’t that the space was actually small, it’s that the way we had laid it out left it feeling much more cramped than it needed to be.

The couch was in the middle of the space, facing the wall, so that the area behind the couch could be used as a home office. As opposed to how the designer helped me mock it up, we planned on putting the dining room table behind the right arm of the couch, next to the desk area.

This layout designated a “zone” for every activity in the living space. Unfortunately, it did leave everything feeling cramped and smushed together.

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The Tiny Tweak That Saved My Living Room

Immediately, my mom asked me to move the couch against the wall it was facing. Though I was hesitant, we mocked up the space as she envisioned it—it was instantly so much better.

With the couch against the wall, we were able to fit a larger dining room table in the original corner where we wanted it. Instead of a desk, the TV will go against the far wall across from the couch.

We are sacrificing our home office opportunities, but my roommate and I both prefer to work from the couch, anyway. Plus, with this new layout, we were able to get a bigger dining table than we thought we’d be able to fit, and we can work from there, too.

This structure keeps the whole room feeling open and airy, instead of there being multiple areas where people would hypothetically have their backs to one another. Both of the windows let in a lot of light without a physical disturbance keeping you from gazing outside.

Most importantly, my cat approves of the new couch location. So, that’s probably where it will stay.