Top 5 Mistakes in Space Planning
32 min
•Feb 12, 20264 months agoSummary
This episode identifies the top 5 mistakes in residential space planning: under-furnishing, pushing furniture against walls, incorrect scale, not measuring before designing, and ignoring vantage points. The hosts emphasize that thoughtful space planning is an art form that transforms how homes feel and function, with practical solutions for each common pitfall.
Insights
- Under-furnishing is the most common and impactful mistake—every upholstered piece needs an adjacent side table and lamp to create functional, conversational spaces
- Floating furniture and pulling pieces off walls creates better flow, layering, and visual interest than wall-hugging arrangements
- Vantage points and sightlines from room entrances and adjacent spaces are critical to professional-level space planning that most DIYers overlook
- Scale mismatches (oversized sofas with tiny rugs/tables/art) are nearly universal; correct proportions dramatically improve room cohesion
- Space planning is a learnable art form that separates good interior design from great—it requires studying masters and understanding lifestyle integration
Trends
Pattern-forward and hero furniture pieces replacing years of solid, minimalist design dominanceMulti-zone seating arrangements in large open-concept homes creating intimate conversations within expansive spacesThrifted and vintage furniture mixed with modern pieces creating dynamic, collected aestheticColor and texture renaissance in interior design moving away from extended beige/neutral periodsIncreased focus on lighting as a design element—proper lamp heights and fixture scale now considered essential to space planningAngled furniture placement and sculptural pieces as markers of design sophistication and intentionalitySofa tables and console styling as layering tools for visual graduation and functional surface areaMeasuring and documentation (photos with dimensions) becoming standard practice for furniture shopping and design decisions
Topics
Under-furnishing and furniture scale in residential spacesFloating furniture arrangements and wall-to-wall spacing rulesSide tables, spot tables, and cocktail table placement (18-inch rule)Sofa tables and console styling for layering and visual interestRug sizing and proportion to seating arrangementsLighting design—lamp heights, fixture scale, and chandelier placementArt scale and wall placement relative to furnitureMeasuring and documentation before furniture purchasesVantage points and sightlines in space planningMulti-zone seating for large open-concept roomsChair selection and angled furniture placementColor graduation and height layering in roomsShowroom and gallery space planning as study modelsFurniture as art form and conversation starterLifestyle integration through thoughtful space planning
Companies
Alice Lane Home
Host's furniture and design company; mentioned for President's Day sale (20% off sitewide) and recent Odessa, Texas i...
Cozy Earth
Sponsor offering bamboo pajamas and cuddle blankets; promoted with code DEARALICE for up to 20% off
Baker Furniture
Cited as example of masterful space planning and showroom design that hosts study for inspiration
People
Thomas O'Brien
Interior designer and furniture designer cited as master of space planning; hosts study his showroom arrangements at ...
Ray Booth
Interior designer praised for space planning expertise and furniture design; studied as example of professional-level...
Suzanne Kasler
Interior designer whose showroom and space planning approach is studied by hosts as example of excellence
Kelly Wearstler
Designer noted for hero furniture pieces and dynamic profile-driven design conversations in spaces
Quotes
"Space planning is the art of arranging furniture in a space regardless of size, that is smart, has good flow and is interesting and beautiful for the eye"
Suzanne (host)•Early in episode
"Every piece of upholstery in the room should have a side table next to it, whether it be a spot table"
Suzanne (host)•Mistake #1 discussion
"18 inches is really sufficient to just get, to actually use the space and have relationship from one piece of furniture to another"
Sue (host)•Mistake #2 discussion
"Thoughtful space planning is what separates the good from the great"
Host•Episode conclusion
"If you are a designer out there, spend some time in furniture this year. Really make it a romance and really study the greats"
Host•Closing advice
Full Transcript
Hello. Hi. Hi. How are you? Solid. I love space planning. That's what we're gonna talk about today. I love it. Welcome everyone to Dear Alice to another episode where we are gonna discuss the space plan like Sue said. Yep and specifically what not to do. We can tell you what to do but we really want to like let you know what to avoid or what to look around at your own home and be like shoot I could guilty yeah we all have things like that oh my gosh yep yeah yeah this room is not fulfilling the measure of its creation no we're probably all gonna roast each other today who knows who knows what's gonna happen I probably have 60% I know just I love it but we want you to be better we do we want you guys to live the dream and so we're gonna go through our five top mistakes that we see in space planning and if you have one of them it's okay It just means that now you know you're informed and you are going to have a better space plan this year. You're going to live more beautifully. Yeah. Yep. It's not hard. It just is rearranging the furniture for the most part. Maybe you're going to grab stuff from other rooms. Maybe you're going to put it on the blender, spit it out differently. You love doing this. I love it. Oh, my gosh. I love it so much. If I could have delivery guys once a week. Furniture smoothie all day long. I wouldn't have you fun. It would be so much fun. Yeah. It feels like recycling. I know, right? But it's such a mood boost. exactly yeah so i want to teach you guys how to do it it's going to be really fun i wanted to say the president's day sale is on and popping at alice lane home it's site-wide sale of 20 off so it's you can have your own category whatever you want whatever you need everything's on sale so go get it while the getting is good it started on the 9th and it will go through the 16th so you've got four days left so we're smack dab in the middle of it and i also wanted to tell you if you haven't yet checked out the new series Dear Alice the Reveal it's live on YouTube and you can go check it out it went live at the end of January and we took them inside our Odessa Texas install ALID was there for a week and you got to see this beautiful dream home come together and we're so excited to get to share it with you okay before we jump into it I was thinking maybe we define space planning for the people and then tell them like why it's important and why we're discussing it. That's true. It is kind of a fancy word. Most people might not know. Okay. So you're asking me? Yeah. You're asking me. Okay. I wrote down my own definition. I asked you out GPT and then I like riffed off that. So I'm going to tell you Suzanne's definition of space planning. I believe it is the art of arranging furniture in a space regardless of size, be it small, be it large. Space planning is smart. You look at the flow from one room to the next and it's interesting and beautiful for the eye say it again art of arranging furniture in a space regardless of size that is smart has good flow and is interesting and beautiful for the eye that's why i asked you well said yeah yeah the arrangement of furniture it's an art in itself and what we'll often see is spaces that are not living up to their full potential we see dream homes you could go to zillow right now and see dream homes that have poor space planning in it and the rooms don't feel as magical as you thought they feel when you're looking at the outside of that home and generally what you're going to see is underscaled or wrong scaled furniture right for sure underscaled rugs and it just kind of gives a look of more of a storage unit where people just go and they park their sofas in chairs so they all maybe face a tv or they're not real there's not really an art to the arrangement of it so we wanted to take you through how to make it more artful what to avoid doing and i think again to the under furnishing thing which is i think the biggest thing that we see when we go into anyone's home which is buying furniture is expensive we get it and i think a lot of it is just you don't know what to buy you know i think it's just a matter of educating yourself if you're sitting in an empty room with two things you know and it feels empty i think that's just part of it is educating yourself and looking at successful spaces that you think are beautiful that you like to sit in you'd like to stay a while while and listen to this podcast and we'll teach you what is beautiful to live with not only I think to look at but just to function all the time with two case goods sitting on one wall one might just be holding old dvds one might be an old console from when they were first married and then the rest of the stuff is just kind of randomly there so nothing has a function or purpose yeah so yeah and it's like they just had them move or sit them there and they're like we'll figure out what to do later and then you kind of stop seeing it because life gets so busy. I think another example of under furnishing is we often go into a home and they've got sofas or maybe a pair of matching sofas or a sectional and maybe a chair. They might have a coffee table. They never have a side table or a console behind the sofa with a pair of lamps, a side table with the lamp, nowhere to put a drink down. If they did offer you a drink, you'd hold it in your hand the whole time. Or in between your legs if you're eating. In between And you're like creating ore in between your feet so that it doesn't tip over. But then it's still going to spill on the carpet. Yeah. I would say under furnishing might be the most underwhelming of the five that we have today when you're looking at an entire space. Jess was saying before, like you see the outside of a home and you're like, wow, it's going to be amazing. And then, you know what I mean? That type of feeling. I think that's why we put it at number one because it really is drab. I'm going to say every piece of upholstery in the room should have a side table next to it, whether it be a spot table. So if this is your favorite lounge chair, a spot table might be a little tiny. We have one called the Dorothy Spot Table. It's a little tiny marble table. It's big enough to hold a drink. It's big enough to hold your cell phone. It's just a little tiny spot to put something down. It's so charming. It's like a little punctuation mark in there. Or you could do something like our Shirley table with the little brass handle, the glass top. You could move that around to whoever has drinks to put it down. Or even our Geneva side table. It's a slim, long table you could stack right next to a sofa. It's only going to take up an additional 18 to 20 inches. So you don't have to have a huge, big, round side table when you're thinking about side tables. Side tables come in all shapes and sizes. What you want to do is think about if you were to have a room full of guests, where would they all put their drinks down? Make sure that you accommodate them, right? One chair only needs one spot table. I think a sofa needs a table on both sides. Bible truths I remember from school, you know, 18 inches from your sofa to your cocktail table and every seat needs a spot to put a drink and a lamp to read by. Yes. So if you don't have that, that's a really good indication that you're under furnished. You're under furnished. Exactly. So. Yep. Yep. And when you can be generous, I love the spot table specifically for the occasional table and then buy your sofas. When you can be generous, be generous. Yes. And it'll fill the space and then it won't fill. even if some of you have end tables and you're like gosh it still just doesn't feel quite right it's probably because you could go larger so also under furnished if you're going to walk into the room and you're going to be looking at the back of a sofa or a love seat you should probably consider if there's room to have a sofa table behind it so that you can dress the back side of that and style it for the vantage point of the of coming into the room that you're not just looking at the back of the sofa. Now, if you have a curved sofa or something really interesting to look through, and it will take you into the scene, that's totally where you can break the rules. But I oftentimes will just see this floating sectional as close to the TV as they can get it. And they're not considering that there's room behind it. And that's the vantage point from the kitchen or the vantage point coming into the room. So oftentimes people forget about what's behind the sofa as well The other thing about these rules is that everybody notices them but they may not be able to put their finger on it And that what we doing is just identifying those things They feel like it could be better but they can tell you why These are those things That a great point Corey Let me speak to one more point about the console Even if you're not floating the sofa and walking into the back of it, I still think it looks incredible to have a sofa table behind a sofa, even if it's up against a wall. Because you don't want to, our second point that we're going to make is people always push their furniture up against the wall. and as much as you can give your pieces a little bit of space to breathe, I have a sofa table behind my sofa. Otherwise, it would be up against a wall. But that sofa table gives you a surface. If you're in the middle of the sofa, you can put your drink down, right? But also it gives you a surface to pile on some beautiful either a pair of lamps. It graduates height, which I think is really important in a room. I have some taller ceilings. And so if my room just ended at my three-foot sofa height, My ceilings are 17 feet tall. There's art, but there's still another layer. And the eye wants to graduate heights. I think having that sofa table there will allow you to do piles of books, a lamp, a sculpture. It will give another conversation happening for the artwork. So that's another really great opportunity in the new year. If you're like, I can't put my finger on why this doesn't look exceptional. You might just need to have a layer to be able to graduate more height. I loves to graduate from the ground to the side table to the table to the sofa arm to the table to the art. It wants to be able to see this progression and not just have a sofa sitting there and then artwork on the wall. There's so much more that you can do to tell the story and make it really exceptional. Totally agree. And to that point, number two is pulling it off of the wall. Yes. And you feel the architecture a little bit more too. I don't know what you're sitting and actually using the space, but also as a viewer, when you're walking to the space, it feels like a really well-layered outfit every time. I don't know what it is about human nature, but they do feel like that when you get furniture that you just push it against all the walls. And then if there is a cocktail table, it's feet, three feet away from the southern island. Like the Madison Island, yeah, it's floating out there. Yeah, you just can't really access it. You guys, if you remember, Sue just barely gave us the rule from Interior Design School. Tell them again, how far from the sofa should the front of the cocktail table be? 18. That was like a really good... 18 what? 18 inches, Jessica Bennett. Inches, not feet. No, not feet. 18 inches. And that gives, it's close enough for you to set a drink down. It's close enough for you to put your feet up on said table or cocktail item and whatever it is. But it's also far enough that somebody can walk by or kind of scoot. So give yourself 18 inches, I think is a really good rule. general pathways for things. If you're like, oh, this is feeling too crap. If you have three feet to get in and around things, that is gracious. That is code for ADA wheelchair to get through. 18 inches is really sufficient. I think to just get, to actually use the space and have relationship from one piece of furniture to another. And I think that that is, we say this all the time that even when you're not in the room with a button, you should be able to look into a room and see a conversation happening between the pieces. It should be an interestingly enough conversation. The profiles look good with each other. The colors look interesting. You know, the lamp is kind of weird. And you're like, she's a fun person at the party. It should look like a conversation. So if you walk into your room, you're, this conversation is lame. You know, you're under furnished. And sometimes, you know what I think makes it feel even more conversational is throwing something on an angle. Oh girl. Right? Yep. The sofa's probably squared up most likely. And you'll probably have some chairs on the 90 degree, but you've got to get that really beautiful sculptural iconic piece on a 45 degree angle or even cocked just a little bit off so you can see that three quarter shot of it. Or you want to walk into the room and see the backside, this three quarter shot of that best looking chair. You've got to get things on angles to make it really feel like there's a conversation and that there's an art going on. Yeah, and if you want to look like you have a master's degree in space planning and just cool interior vibe anyway, get a rad chair. I don't care if it's comfortable, but if it looks good and it's a conversation starter and you throw that girl on an angle, you win. You have a master's degree in space planning. Congratulations. Yeah, you're a collector. You're a collector. That's one of my favorite things because the chairs are easy to acquire. You can get them at thrift stores, vintage market. You inherit them if you're collecting good ones. I'm a good chair collector. Yeah. You know, I collect art and I collect chairs because they're easier than bigger pieces of furniture. Yeah. But seeing them all together, I'm like, what a party. Yeah. My chairs are having with each other. It's the cutest. We'll often say, too, that the chairs are the character of the room. Sofas are large enough that you can't always get a ton of character in them. Now, granted, pattern sofas are starting to come into play. And so they're fun. They are fun. They're a good time. We've been in the land of solids for a very long time. So the only way to really get style points was through your interesting chairs. And that was their job was to bring the party to the room. So certainly become a great chair collector and get those things on angles and get the conversation going. I like that you said the thing about the pattern sofa. Because now more than ever is like pattern on pattern, hero on hero. Such a thing. And so I dare say I'm just start collecting the heroes as you build your collection of furniture for your home. you know now through the next five or ten years 15 years you're going to have pieces that you keep forever and some pieces will kind of go by the wayside but as you start to collect you start to tell a really interesting story full of space planning heroes it's the best the mistake i've always made in my mind i have to have a spot for something so for years i've just been oh i don't know where i'm going to say this one thing i'm trying to change in 2026 is i'm just going to buy it and I'm going to figure it out later. Yeah, you are. So yeah, that's good advice to everybody, by the way. Just buy it. Solve for it later. If it's good, it has a home. If you fall in love with it, it has a home. Yeah. If something about it attracted you to it, you'll find a spot for it. And honestly, look at art galleries. It's so sparse. You have things on the wall and you might have one cool, beautiful bench and that's it. You have one rad chair. I would get rid of all your ugly sofas, put one rad chair in there and call an art gallery for a second while you collect. And this is, yeah, if a hundred percent, this is my opinion. Don't put that against the wall. Yeah. I would much rather have an over furnished home than an under furnished kind of going back to the other one. And then when I see furniture pushed up against the walls, it makes me think of stepbrothers when they build their own bunk beds. It's like so much room for activities. That's not, it's a joke and it's funny. That's why I laugh about it. But that's what I hear in my head every time I see that. But really those rooms aren't cozy and they don't feel like home and that's what we're after and that's why we're discussing space planning right now so when I think about February I think about how am I going to show a little bit of extra love this month and one way to do it it could be in self-care and indulge or you can give the most thoughtful gift it will be loved all season long and I always think about cozy earth when it when it comes to this. First up, I have to say the pajamas are such a go-to gift for me. They are really soft. They are temperature regulating and they drape so beautifully. So everybody looks good in them, feels good. And what's most important, sleeps great in the bamboo pajama set. The other one I love is their classic cuddle blanket. This looks so rich and plush and expensive at the foot of a bed. I've got it on my daughter's beds. We've been giving them as gifts lately. Everybody loves receiving this blanket. It's so indulgent. It's so gorgeous. And you really do truly feel cared and comforted. If you want to share a little extra love this February and wrap yourself or someone you care about in comfort and truly feel special head to CozyEarth and use my code DEARALICE for up to 20 off That code DEARALICE for up to 20 off And if you get a post survey be sure and mention you heard about Cozy Earth right here And we live in a really nice neighborhood with a lot of really large estates. And our home's probably one of the smallest for sure. But I hope that like my kids' friends are like, man, is the Hall's home cozy. Wow. One of his friends came in and he's like, you always have a candle burning, Mrs. Hall. I'm like, you betcha. You remember that. You take that home with you. That's my life advice, you son. But like make, yeah, that's what space planning does. That's what evokes these feelings, these habits, you know, of just storytelling and conversation and kookiness. And memory points because that kid's going to remember that for the rest of his life. Yeah, he's going to smell that. I don't know what it is. He's going to be like, oh, the halls. and some girl in his future is gonna love that he knows that and you know that's something he'll carry she's gonna be like you know what a true dawn candle is yeah it's gonna be like darn right totally you just scored that dude a date in like 10 years that's awesome you're welcome west okay the next one is that scale is usually off oh yeah yeah 100 of the time yeah okay i'm gonna go so is to say the sofa's too big and the tables are too small or there are no tables and the rug's too small. Almost a hundred percent of the time the rug is too small. The rug's like a sample. It's not even, it's not even a, oh it's hilarious. And the room just feels so tiny and they feel so terrible together. The too small rug with the oversized sofa. And if this is you, you're not alone yeah it's everyone so yeah for sure usually the side tables are forgotten there's like windows in the mix and the wrong pieces are just shoved up against them it's probably a love seat just shoved up against a huge window and then the sofa's on the biggest long wall and there's no table in between them a relationship and they're too far apart to even have a conversation but they're like i don't know what to do i put them against the wall where they go you know really just pulling those things off the wall and starting to get them to have a relationship where where that chair and that sofa are almost touching in legs and then you have a void there to be able to put your side table in get a really beautiful big lamp cast some light on that conversation other scale things that we see that are wrong usually the light fixture is yeah a flash a boob light boob lights for sure like so you don't have any interaction between the ceiling eye level yeah like we see that a lot I'm gonna say art art's always small and I think art just like again to your point of graduation you know you see like the sofa the sofa table the lamps the art or that thing that backdrop should be prominent that should be a really large scale most people have something that's small and it's hung too high so pull that down grow it even if it's something that you love I guarantee you your frame can grow that thing you know and make it more proportionate to the whole seating room yeah you know seating arrangement yeah so art is usually a foul Well, lighting in general, like not only the lamp is too short, I think in a living room, 30 inches is kind of our gold standard. Oh, for the height of the lamp. For the height of a lamp, 30 inches is you can have nice even cast. I'm not going to walk by it and be able to see into, you know, the harp and everything. Like you don't want to see the mechanics of that. And so the 30 inches is the perfect height. I love that. And then usually the chandelier, it either didn't have, it's either boob light or it wasn't ordered with enough chain and the diameter's off. So anyway, these are all just little things to consider as you are starting. If you're ready to buy anything, research it. Really understand what the scale should be for that room. And then what are the other players? And even if they're not permanent players, how can you arrange them so that it's more lovely? Yes. I love that. Okay. The next one is not measuring before designing. Ugh. Yes. Yes. Oh my gosh. Okay. I'll give a quick story. So I was going on this antique buying trip in August and I knew I wanted to get something. I was trying for something original over my mantle. So I thought, okay, what am I going to need while I'm out shopping to make the very best decision? So I stood back at the back of my living room and I took a picture of my mantle wall. I was like, that way when I'm looking at art, I can pull out my cell phone and just have the picture right in front of me and stare at the art and see if this is a good marriage. Cause let's remember and keep of mind or if you're new here I decided to paint my grass cloth walls this dark peacock teal color this past summer and my windows and my mantle so everything is teal the ceiling is peach so it's kind of a vibe and the art has to be just the right thing to get along okay so I take a picture I'm standing back so I can hold it up and I was like oh you know what well I've got this photo open I'm just going to use a little pencil tool you know how you can have tools and so I just selected the pencil and I'm just going to measure the space between my sconces because I could write it in notes but I'm a visual person so I just drew a red line on the picture itself and then I drew in what the dimensions were between the sconces so I knew for sure the frame had to land in between that and then I gave myself what the height was above my mantle and so when I was art shopping it was so helpful just to have that with me it would be nice for you to have a picture of your room if needed if there's a sales associate or a designer working there you could share what you're doing generally a picture is going to be worth a thousand words you might not have the vocabulary that they have and so just being able to share an image will give them ideas when you're out shopping or even will just jog your memory about what's in the space and if this new side table when you're out vintage shopping really will be just the thing to collect it so as you're working on a room I would say take a few photos of the room as it sits and what you're solving for um I mean you can be like Corey too and just if it's rad bring it home for it you'll find a place Suze is great at doing that with art. I knew I needed a piece that had to fit within the sconces and that had to fit my new vibe. I did not come home with anything, but I also didn't come home with something that didn't fit because of the one piece I did love. I would have had to have removed my sconces to make it fit. And so anyway, I'm glad that I'm glad that I had that with me and I still have it on my phone. So always bring a measuring tape. I always keep a ribbon measuring tape in my purse it's on me at all time and then whatever I'm solving for I usually now have pictures with measurements I think what's also fun to do understanding the width and depth of the room yes so if you do stumble upon a really cool rug yeah and it's a 10 by 14 you can't skip me I can fit that in my room yeah so because that's what happened to me yeah I was like oh gosh you I don't know if I can fit a 10 by 14 and lo and behold I had my measurements I was yes I can that's great so anyway and it made my measurements do you keep them in your notes on your phone yeah yeah yeah no i have a folder that just says call house and so i'll take a picture and i usually just use the write-up one where you doodle on it yep and so if i have a tape measure in a room i'll just make sure i have those like things on hand because it just it will bite you when you find something that's great and you're away from home and no one's answering the phone you know to confirm that and then someone else buys it and you lose oh and everybody has one of those stories about the one that got away y'all you know yeah oh there's so much regret so many i'm not getting the thing that would have just absolutely brought your entry to life. Yeah. We'll never know because we didn't have a measuring tape. Our last point today is not considering the vantage points, which I think is the next level from the things that we've been talking about like since. This is what the pros do. They're definitely going to be solving for getting the right seating arrangement in there, but they're really considering what that room looks like at the approach of the room, where you going to experience it for the first time what does that look like This might be news to people out there I don think my dad would even think about things like I wonder what that would look like from the back Or if I standing at the kitchen island and viewing this room what does that look like You know what I mean The vantage points are really just that first payoff to a really beautiful room and something that we're often solving for, especially if you're going to be seeing two scenes at once. Maybe you can see a dining table and beyond that, a living room. You really want to understand what those vantage points are. and it's just really, really important to the space plan. I think a master at space planning, if you want to do a study on it, is Thomas O'Brien. Sue and I will often go to Sentry when we're at market just to walk into his room because he space plans his own room. It's funny, you can often walk through showrooms and they're not always beautifully considered, but when you get to Thomas's space, it's like a reverence comes over us just because just stop and study the space planning. It's the most beautiful mathematical arrangement of art and design and things fitting. Effortlessness. It feels like a party was just had and he left the building. Yeah. And you can see where people have been talking because there's little, just at the angles, the things are turned. It's not like you're laying it out in CAD where things are at the square. And I might throw this on a 45, but like it's really something like a tactile art. It's a lifestyle. You feel the lifestyle of the way somebody would live when you walk into his scene. I think Baker does another really masterful job at space planning. And it's just an art to just stand in a doorway and just consider the vantage points. Consider what's happening in front of you and then off to the sides. And they're often big open spaces because they're showrooms, but they create small conversations within it. So there's multiple scenes. And we've been able to do this with some of the large spaces that we've worked on for homes. We just completed an install. And the living room is so vast. It has, I don't even know how many groupings are in it. I'd say probably one, two, three, four. Yeah. This is where it really is in art. But it could grow to six if the party was right, move things around. And I want to say today the homes have gotten bigger. And there probably should be more than one space plan. Absolutely. in a lot of rooms that we see where they just think they can solve for it with one big sectional and getting a couple of chairs. Really, when you're having a conversation, you're really just talking with somebody, whoever's close by you. You could even be having somebody on a sofa next to you who's having a different conversation with someone. So the more space plans or the more little groupings you can have, the more intimate and cozy even a large room can feel and this is a real missed opportunity um in a space so i think vantage points obviously being important and then considering some of those arrangements for conversation is going to give you that real art of the lifestyle i should add this to my definition somehow but there's a romance yeah there's an absolute romance of space planning i think we've all experienced spaces where we've walked in why does this feel so good like the lighting's right it smells incredible everything's us at the right angle because really by working with it live you know that the lamp that's casting light is going to hit the back of that chair like sculpture in the most perfect way and so there there is an art to it but I do think that it's something that can be learned yes by studying it studying it yeah yeah who are some of the greats who do you like to study no for sure Thomas O'Brien honestly I was thinking about vantage points and I and I know I talk about art galleries a lot but when you think about their room to rooms, go to art galleries, and they do a really cool job at how they center it. And that's with one facet of it, right? That's just with art. They sometimes have sculpture and things like that. But the way, like I often study that, where the center of a door is, what is that lining up with three rooms down? You know, because that's considered, the color of the rooms, that's considered. But in furniture, for sure, Thomas O'Brien, I think Ray Booth does a really good job. I think he's probably a student, probably of Thomas O'Brien also. I think Kelly Worser's just fun. just because her pieces are heroes. It's a hero on a hero on a hero. And I think that there's so many young cool designers that are coming to the forefront with those kind of profiles. And it's fun to see these conversations between furniture pieces exist because I do think the whole like thrifted and bringing history with something modern is such a dynamic, I'll say trend, that people are really adhering to. And so, but you feel it. The rooms are what we're seeing right now. It's a renaissance for interior design. For sure. And we've been in a really low beige stage for a long time. And we just needed a real strong injection of color and we're getting it. And I think we're getting it on all facets, not only color, but profiles, pattern, texture, the whole gamut. And it's just kind of figuring out what is it that you love. And that's how you dress your home. Yeah. Yeah. With stuff that matters. Yep. And to kind of summarize all of that, I think thoughtful space planning is what separates the good from the great. Amen. Or the great for the good rather. Yeah, I agree. And you know what? If you are an interior designer, I don't know how much time that they spent at the school that you went to on actual space planning. It seems like the technical parts are what's often taught the most. But there's a real decorating layer that comes in when you're building the lifestyle outside of the technicality and getting all of those pieces right. And being really good at furniture. I think one of the things that Alice Lane has become is great at furniture because we had a furniture store first. We are always going to market and we are always shopping. We are always experiencing Ray Booth's space and Suzanne Kassler's space and Thomas O'Brien's. And seeing how furniture is an art form and how they use furniture because they are furniture designers. And then also how they're dressing pieces. This is a real art in itself. And not every designer is good at every part. So if you are a designer out there, spend some time in furniture this year. Really make it a romance and really study the greats and learn how to become awesome at space planning. It's really how the house feels at the end of it because you can deliver a big, beautiful, empty new build. But most likely they want you to furnish it. And you don't want to phone that in. You want to really, really spend time romancing it. Yeah. It matters. yeah like it's the biggest i think takeaway when you walk into a new home you're just like okay they spend all the money on the windows you know yeah you're gonna get the furniture but that's the stuff you get to live with you know like so really don't make sure that you pace yourself to make that you can live beautifully at the end of that day yeah yeah agreed yeah so good well you guys if you have any episode ideas or questions for us please send those in to dear alice at alicelanehome.com. We'd love it if you'd leave us a five-star review. And go look at your space. See how you can up-level it this year. See its potential. Look at those vantage points. Understand if maybe you're missing a lamp or a spot table. It's a really fun exercise. Don't be afraid to steal things from another room. It might just be sitting in, I don't know, a closet. I was so surprised to find a great pair of pillows in a closet the other day at my house. Or go shopping, vintage shopping or otherwise, or actually hit up the President's Day sale. Everything's 20% off sitewide at alicelanehome.com. And we'll catch you guys next time. Hey, thanks for listening. If you like our show, please leave a five-star rating. We'll see you next time.