Bay-Window rooms

What the condition actually does

A bay is the room’s natural destination — extra floor, wraparound light, a view in three directions — and the default furnishing crime is to blockade it: sofa across the mouth, curtains cutting the recess off, radiator ignored. A bay wants either a destination (window seat, reading chair, breakfast table) or a frame (curtains hung outside the recess, the floor run through, a piece placed IN it facing the room). What it never wants is to be the bright bit behind the furniture.

The first move

Pull whatever blockades the bay out of its mouth and put one chair inside it, facing the room. Sit there once and the bay’s real use will announce itself — seat, desk spot, or breakfast table — before the week is out.

Light under this condition

The bay needs its own evening identity: a lamp or pendant within the recess keeps it part of the room after dark, instead of a black hole where the day’s best feature used to be.

What fights it

• A sofa across the mouth of the bay, fencing off the room’s best light and 2 square metres of floor
• A straight curtain rail beheading the recess
• Using the bay floor as plant-and-box storage, which reads as a bright junk corner