Once the counter is sorted, the dining table is the piece that decides whether the room feels generous or cramped. In a small open plan, I would choose round almost every time. A round table has no corners to catch a hip, it seats an extra person in a pinch, and it lets the path from the kitchen to the sofa curve around it instead of stopping dead at an edge.

Size matters more than style. Around thirty inches across seats two comfortably and three if someone is small or patient. Urban Outfitters' Bend Goods bistro table is exactly that size, with a wire base you can see through, which keeps the floor visually open. Lulu and Georgia's Palo bistro by Élan Byrd and Anthropologie's Pierre are both slim wood versions that look lovely under a window. The Cabrera from Anthropologie uses reclaimed wood, so it arrives with the kind of marks you would otherwise worry about making.

If you have a little more room, step up to a true round dining table. McGee & Co.'s Miriam and Gilroy and Lulu and Georgia's Brume seat four, and on a pedestal base they are far easier to squeeze chairs around than a table with four legs. For a very small corner, Bay Isle Home's round set for two comes with its chairs, which saves you the matching headache.

A trick I learned from a friend with a tiny loft: put the table where the kitchen and living room meet. It becomes the hinge between the two, a place to drop groceries, work, eat and fold laundry, and suddenly the room has a middle.

In a room without walls, lighting does the job walls would do. A pendant over the counter or the table tells you, without anyone saying so, that this is where you eat. A lamp by the sofa says this is where you rest. Hang one pendant, turn off the overhead light, and a small open plan suddenly feels like two rooms.

I like pendants with some texture here, because they are seen from the sofa as much as from the kitchen. Anthropologie's Petal pendant by Hudson Valley Lighting and the scalloped Savannah are both woven rattan, warm and soft when lit. Urban Outfitters' Rya fringe pendant is playful, the one I would hang over a small round table. Eny Lee Parker's Ara and Almahdi pendants for Lulu and Georgia are sculptural ceramic, more like objects than fixtures. McGee & Co.'s Hastings and Sutter are simple and quiet, good if the rest of your room already has a lot going on. Urban Outfitters' Dupe planter pendant holds a trailing plant, a clever way to bring something green into a kitchen with no windowsill.

Hang pendants lower than you think, roughly thirty inches above a table, so the light pools on the surface instead of in your eyes.

What I would skip: three matching pendants in a row over a small counter. It reads like a restaurant and crowds a room that needs air. One good light, or two at most, is plenty.

The rooms I have loved living in were the ones where every piece earned its place and nothing was there just to fill space.

If you take one thing away, let it be this: choose furniture that can tuck, fold or curve out of the way, and use light to separate the kitchen from the living room. A backless stool, a round table and one low pendant will do more for a tiny open room than any renovation. Once those three are in place, add a rug under the sofa to finish the living side, and the room will finally read as two spaces that happen to share air.