Life can be a tight squeeze in student houses – but University of Brighton undergraduates have come up with clever ideas to create more space.

A final year product design student exhibition includes two new ways of making the most of petite living.

Amy Burns has come up with ‘Mounted’, a dining or work table on a pulley system which means it can be lowered when needed and stowed away on the ceiling when it is not.

Ms Burns said: “Living in student houses as you do when at university can mean eating meals on your lap and squeezing onto the couch next to your friends – with no room for a permanent flat surface. But this gives you a table when you need it and one that can be quickly put out of the way when you don’t.”

Adam Hargrave has a similar hideaway idea born from living in student digs with an 8ft-wide room.

His ‘Mobler Furniture System’ includes a chair and table, both of which fold away neatly against the wall.