Apartment Choice

One of the biggest downsides to studio living is feeling like you live — and entertain — in your bedroom. But even though that might physically/technically be true, it doesn't mean you can't use design to make it feel like it's more than just a studio. These smart and stylish studios — all under 500 square feet — employ three of the most successful ways to make a studio apartment feel bigger than it is. And they're design tips that anyone can use (whether you have more than one room or not!) to make any room feel better. Choose double duty furniture Alee Ruggieri's 200 square foot Greenwich Village studio Alee's studio apartment is successful thanks to the powers of double- duty furniture . In the morning, her bed transforms into what looks like a sofa by a simple rearrangement of throw pillows. Placing it with a long edge against a wall (like you would a sofa), helps the illusion. Arranging the rest of the home's furniture around the bed/sofa makes he...

IN THE 1960s and ’70s, long before helicoptering emerged as a parenting style, adults had far less interest in looming over their children, frequently urging them to go play outside or downstairs. The netherworld to which these parents pointed was usually a recreation room or finished basement, clad insipidly in wood-veneer paneling and linoleum. Furnishings typically included a saggy sofa, a scratched ping-pong table and a built-in bar never used for mixing drinks; instead, the kids commandeered it as a make-believe store or a stage for puppet shows. Not even Dad’s novelty naked- lady martini stirrers lured him down once the children moved in. And the closest Mom got was to stand at the top of stairs and yell, “Supper’s ready! Wash your hands!” Perhaps these ratty rec rooms weren ’t worthy of House Beautiful, but the stints of physical distance they offered parents and offspring arguably benefited both in ways today’s airy cathedral-ceiling’d great rooms can’t. These days, peopl...