There's a difference between a home that's set up for company and a home that's ready for company. The former requires effort - clearing surfaces, pulling out the good dishes, rearranging chairs that live somewhere else the majority of the  year. The latter is simply a house that can easily adapt to host your in-laws, a group of friends or the entire soccer team..

That second kind is what we love to design for. Not because every room needs to be able to host a crowd, but because the best gathering spaces tend to be the ones that were never designed exclusively for gathering at all. They're just generous, flexible, maybe a little more open than expected and most of all - inviting.

Here are a few of the small adjustments we come back to again and again, in both our own homes and for our clients’.

When walking into a room, you notice how it looks and how it makes you feel. The light, the color, the furniture pieces, the artwork on the walls. Most people rarely think about what the surfaces and products in the space are actually made of.

The entryway is one of the most-used, yet minimally-considered rooms in most homes. It is the first thing you see when you walk in and the last thing you pass on your way out. It can be viewed as an afterthought instead of a prime design opportunity.

There's a tendency to talk about small spaces as a problem to solve, in which the square footage is treated as something to work around rather than with. However, some of the most beautiful and functional homes we've worked on are also some of the smallest. A compact bungalow in South Minneapolis or a limited downtown studio can feel just as gracious as a home twice its size. It simply requires a different kind of intentionality.

When someone tells us they want their space to "feel more connected to nature," their first instinct may be to incorporate large, leafy plants. This can be a great start, but biophilic design, the practice of designing spaces that strengthen our connection to the natural world, is so much bigger than what might be sitting in a terracotta pot on your console table.