I remember standing in my first apartment, a 42-square-metre box with a kitchen the size of a closet and a living room that doubled as a hallway. The renovation bug had bitten me hard, but the real problem wasn't paint colours or light fixtures. It was the bed. Every night, my queen-size mattress ate half the floor space. Every morning, I had to scramble to fold away the duvet just to have room for breakfast. That is the hidden truth of small-space home renovation: you can replace every tile and faucet, but if you cannot solve the sleeping situation, the space will always feel like a compromise. The first thing I learned was that the right furniture is not a decoration. It is infrastructure.

The sofa bed became my obsession. Not the old fold-out metal frame contraption with a thin pad that left you feeling like you had slept on a park bench. I am talking about a proper sofa bed with a click-clack mechanism.