Save Floor Space with a 2D Side Table

Small-apartment living can mean finding increasingly creative places to put things, followed by finding those things with your toes in the dark. Giving up the bedside table would help clear the floor, but where would you keep your reading material and glasses case? Fernando Brízio’s “What You See Is Not,” designed for Droog, offers a particularly entertaining compromise.

The cabinet becomes a wall graphic, while an apparently open drawer remains three-dimensional. You get the suggestion of a complete piece of furniture and a real place for a few essentials, without a conventional cabinet standing beneath it. Your bedroom keeps the visual joke of a bedside table, and your toes have one less set of furniture legs to negotiate.

Fernando Brízio’s 2D Bedside Table for Droog

A Wall Sticker With a Working Third Dimension

As Designboom’s November 2010 feature explains, the illusion changes with your viewing position. From a particular angle, the graphic and projecting drawer suggest a conventional cabinet. Move sideways and the image becomes visibly flat and distorted. The piece depends on the relationship between the physical object, its drawn surroundings, and the person looking at it.

Brízio traced the inspiration to a scene in Buster Keaton’s short film The High Sign, where a painted coat hook appears to support a real hat. That connection makes the design feel like a visual gag brought into everyday furniture. A drawing seems to become useful, although here the genuinely useful part is the drawer projecting from the wall.

Less Cabinet, Still Somewhere to Put Your Book

The cleverness lies in deciding which part of the bedside table needs to remain physical. You cannot put your glasses on a picture of a tabletop. A real drawer, however, supplies a small storage area while the wall graphic completes the familiar outline. The design separates the appearance of furniture from the portion doing the practical work.

There are compromises. The projecting section still occupies space beside the bed, so “2D” does not mean the entire object is flat. And the open storage is not a replacement for a private, enclosed drawer. Anything you would rather keep out of sight needs another home. Your bedtime book can stay; the miscellaneous collection you normally hide underneath it may need relocating.

Related Illusion-Furniture Inspiration

The appeal extends beyond saving floor space. This is furniture that asks you to look twice, then move around to understand what you are seeing. It makes a small storage solution into part of the room’s entertainment. Not every bedside table needs to perform that trick, but it is a welcome alternative to another anonymous box with a handle.

The Pinterest ideas below are included as related inspiration rather than verified examples of Brízio’s original Droog design. Different illusion tables can achieve their effects through very different constructions, and an unusual appearance does not necessarily mean a smaller footprint. For this particular concept, the combination of flat graphic and real storage is what makes the disappearing-cabinet joke work.