How to hide a column in a condo living room
4 October 2026
Walk into almost any condo in the Klang Valley and you will find it: a concrete column, often around 300 × 400 mm, sticking out of the living room wall. It cannot move. It carries the building.
The usual fix is to treat it as a problem on its own. A cabinet goes on one side, a shelf on the other, maybe a strip of wallpaper on the column itself. The column stays visible, and now there are three more lines in the room.
Build in front of it, not around it
The Garis approach is to stop working around the column and build one straight line in front of the whole wall instead.
- Find the deepest point. Measure how far the column sticks out. That depth, plus a little clearance, sets how deep the wall wrap needs to be.
- Run the line the full length of the wall. The front of the wrap is one flat plane from corner to corner. The column ends up inside it.
- Use the space around the column. The gaps either side of the column become storage. Brooms, an ironing board, yoga mats, the things that never have a home.
What it costs you
A wrap that is 450 mm deep takes 450 mm off the room along that wall. On a 5 m wide living room that still leaves 4.5 m, and you get back every cabinet, shelf and side table that was standing in front of the wall before.
Try it on your own wall
The free Garis app lets you scan your room, pick the wall and watch the line slide in. It shows how much storage you gain before anyone picks up a saw.