 It's time, ladies and gentlemen, for Winner Home right here on Afternoon Express. This is the show where we are giving away an apartment at the prestigious Valdivia State in the Cape Winelands, worth more than 3 million rand. And today, we continue the inspiration for our design contestants and you at home. Now with cities being so highly populated, living spaces are getting smaller and smaller. Open living has become the norm in the modern world and we have to make do with less and less square meters. This forces us to think out of the box and to create beautiful, functional spaces in small spaces. On the season of Winner Home, our design contestants are working with just a space, like we spoke about earlier. Here to guide us through this process is interior designer Keelan Pinkus. Welcome to our loft. Thank you. You've got such a vibrant personality. I'm looking forward to unpacking all these details with you because it's such a hard one to get through. Because when I initially was trying to look for property and when I initially moved into my apartment, it isn't a massive apartment and I think the struggles that come with that is it's demotivating. You almost feel like, I'll wait till I have a bigger house to invest money and time into decorating. Absolutely. This is the challenge. Often people find it very intimidating when they've got a small space. And the challenge with this is saying, I need to make my small space as functional as possible. So I think that the importance here is marrying design and functionality. And so one can be really creative and really smart with the way one utilises one space. In duplexes before, we have used, in small apartment duplexes, we've used underneath the staircase as a wine rack, as a little bar, maybe put in a small office desk. So one can really be quite creative in the way in which one uses one space. I like that you said that it's a clever thing that you've got to think quite innovatively about. Because when I first stepped into that apartment, I had no idea even where to begin. Do I start investing loads of money because it's expensive. Loads of money in furniture. Do I paint the walls? Do I buy a table? Where do we begin and what can we do to make small spaces look bigger? Well, first and foremost, I think the biggest problem that people have is when they go into the store, they see things that they love. And what they don't realise is that item may not fit into their space. So the best advice that I could give someone is go to the store, see which pieces of furniture that you really love. And then what you do is you get the dimensions of that item, come home into your space and actually take masking tape and create a blueprint of that dimension amongst your thing. That way you will know if your coffee table doesn't fit, if you've bought a couch that's going to be too big. And then one can also be quite creative. In the photo, sorry, there was one there. Just before this one, yeah. Just before that one. We use ghost chairs that are really quite useful when decorating small spaces that really creates a feeling. You can see through them. They don't feel like a take-up space. Just be smart and then you marry that with a solid wooden table and then one creates warmth opposed to a feeling of emptiness. Great idea. That's a great suggestion. And that's why we use wall colours because colour can make a space look incredibly small and incredibly big. What are some of the colours that we can use that make a space look bigger? Well, you know, we never have, as a designer, say, stay away from any colour specifically. You know, we all like colour. You know, I really love colour. But I think when it comes to your major walls, your big walls, I would say tend to go for a white wall. White creates a feeling of space, brightness, airiness. And then rather to use your accent walls in colour if one would like. And then rather to keep your palette of your furniture quite natural and then to accessorise with colourful cushions and use vases that are colourful. One can be quite creative with colour in other ways. So this is a way that we can, I think, enjoy our small spaces as a whole. But one of the mandates for our contestants for this season is to make sure that that house also becomes soluble. And a lot of the times when I was looking to buy property, when you go into property websites like privateproperty.co.za, you always find that sometimes people don't clean up rooms and it's quite messy. And is there a way that we can design a small space to make it more attractive? So when people do come to attract investment in buyers, then we can make it more attractive. Well, you know, this is one of the things that, you know, being a private property browser myself that, you know, I also struggle with. Oh, okay. Some model loan. No, why do people, first and foremost, clean up your space, remove the clutter, okay? No one wants to look at anyone else's mess, okay? Then what you do is, you know, always accessorise your areas, you know, if it's you showing a bedroom, put a blanket on the bed, scatter cushions, make the place look warm and inviting, like it's livable, but without being messy. Create greenery in the room, you know, a vase with some flowers goes a very long way. And then, yeah, just get rid of the mess and make the home look stylish and magazine-ready. Awesome. So I think everyone's getting excited about that because there's lots of tidbits of information that you've shared now. But I also want to understand the work that you've done in small spaces because maybe people can relate to the work that you've done because you are an expert. I mean, people always think that, oh, these guys always say it, but they've never done it themselves. You have done it. So what are some of the apartments you've done? Well, one of my favorite, most recent apartment is a block apartment, which is a big developer, and we did a show apartment for them and because it needed to be ready for a magazine within a week, you know, we obviously had to buy furniture of showroom floors and this was obviously very challenging but very exciting. It actually gave a really good insight into the furniture that is available in Cape Town and South Africa and one really had to, you know, we had to work really quickly so that was very exciting, a lot of fun. Are these some of the images that we've got now? So talk us through this. What have you done here to make the space look bigger? So, for example, well, the kitchen was a palette that we already had. I mean, it was all white and that's where we've just accessorized with a little bit of colour. Nice. And in the photo previously of the, there we go, you can see it, of the dining room table and the chairs, it was quite a limited space to get in lounge and dining room. So what we ended up doing was having a dining room table where we used benches and then ghost chairs as your head chairs to create also a feeling of space. A illusion of space. And the palette of that apartment was grey and white and so we complemented that with creams and warmer tones of creams and beiges and browns and then we brought in the steel for a modern edge. And then, as we were saying about the colour, you know, never stay away from colour. We used a cement table, quite industrial looking and then popped it with bright yellow chairs. Especially for the outside to keep it nice and fresh and outside that you feel like you're in a fresh space. The bedroom space is what they're working on now. They're working on a guest bedroom. And one of the mandates that these contestants had for building on Valdivis' estate was to make sure that they keep this place looking bigger than what it actually is. And I know that they're all craving advice at the moment. They're consulting and that guest bedroom has been a challenge for them. What advice do you have for our contestants who are trying to make these guest bedrooms on the Valdivis' estate look so beautiful? I think with a guest bedroom, you know, one really doesn't want to clutter a bedroom at all. So I would say keep your linen nice and white and fresh. You know, have a headboard that's built into this space. Side tables, you know, when one's got limited side table space, one can use pendants from the ceiling instead so that you free up your sides next to your bed. One can be really quite inventive with the way one uses their bedroom space. Sure. This is great advice. I'm even taking a little bit of notes. I hope our contestants are too keen. Thanks for joining us in the loft. Nice to be with you. Thank you. Oh, it's so cool to get this kind of advice. This is my favourite thing about having a winter home in the afternoon express. Now, living in small space doesn't mean it can't be designer chic and also decorated beautifully. So get some inspiration and do let those smaller spaces keep you back. Well, particularly don't let them keep you back. But instead, let them inspire you. So this is when a home right here in afternoon express where our three young, talented design contestants gradually transformed three properties at Valdivis' estate using finishes provided by Caesar Stone and Plaskon. Judging their work is the renowned team from Ark Interiors as well as Ann Result from Plaskon and Simon Bray from Private Property. But most importantly, we are giving away one of the completed apartments, worth more than 3 million rand to one lucky viewer in our grand prize competition. Yes, we're giving it away and it's worth more than 3 million rand and entering cannot be any easier. All you have to do is visit privateproperty.co.za now for all of those details. Winter Home is proudly brought to you by Private Property in association with NetBank. Now, after the break, things are getting cheesy as they always do with me in the kitchen as we're putting our finishing touches on our four cheese pasta. Don't go anywhere.