Video tutorial: How to float furnishings in FFXIV

This week, I’ve been hard at work on another video for the FFXIV design series—and it’s for one of my favourite techniques.

I still remember the days when the only way to build extra floors in a house in Final Fantasy XIV was to force a troupe stage to live on top of a window. It was neat, but it was also incredibly limiting. There were only so many places you could build, and you could only ever place tabletop items up on your loft once it was there.

That was the same era when the only way to build stairs was to float a bunch of riviera wall shelves covered in zabuton cushions because you couldn’t actually stand on the shelves, but that’s a topic for another day!

Anyway.

Since it first showed up around the time of Shadowbringers, the wooden loft has completely changed how interior design in FFXIV works. It’s made it so much easier to build extra floors, and it’s given us a simple way to force furniture up into the air. And I think that’s for the better. This new method is faster, it can float things in bulk, and it definitely lets us be more creative.

Now, a little disclaimer for this week’s video. I’ve done two videos about this glitch in the past, and realistically, nothing’s changed about it. I just like updating them every now and again because then I can try and help with the issues others run into.

HEADS UP

This is the third video in my design tutorial series for FFXIV. You’ll find the full list to date of these videos here!

Q: What do I need to do this glitch?

A: Along with your soon-to-be-airborne furniture, you’ll need a partition without any trim, like a wood slat partition, a stage panel, or a white rectangular partition. You’ll also need a wooden loft to do the heavy lifting for you.

A quick note: I did show this in the video as well but partitions with trim (and your house’s walls, for that matter) will not work for this glitch. They’ll prevent you from getting your loft low enough to start the process!

Q: How do I actually float my furniture?

A: This is a smidge more complicated than glitches like floating tabletop items and wall items, but once you get the timing down, it’ll be easy. There are three core steps:

Pick a spot for your furniture that will be far enough away from existing floors in your home. If it’s too close to the floor, it will fall back down—and if it’s too close to the ceiling, it can snap up through the floor, too! Every item has a different orbit, as I call it, so you might need to experiment. Leather sofas don’t need to be up very high but rugs need to be about halfway up a room’s height. Set up a wood slat partition near your furniture.
With your surface placement on, take your wooden loft out of your inventory (not your storage!) and hold it over your partition so that at least part of it is below your furnishing’s hitbox. Its hitbox will always be where the move or rotate icons show up. Then, place your loft and quickly close your housing menu. Go back into your housing menu, remove the loft to your inventory, and repeat as many times as you need to.
The last big step is to rotate-lock your furniture. I don’t know what wizardry happens behind the scenes, but rotating your item slightly and then rotating it back to where you want it tells the game that it needs to stay floating. If you don’t do this step, it will fall back down, even if it’s technically far enough away from the floor!

Q: What can go wrong with floating furniture?

A: This is one of the fussier glitches, so there are a few different things that can go wrong. Here are some of the most common:

Your furniture won’t lift with a wooden loft. This happens with some furnishings—you aren’t doing it wrong, it’s just how they’re coded. If you’re trying to float one of these furnishings, like glade stools or mannequins, try using a riviera wall shelf and taking smaller steps upwards. Remember, mannequins need a shelf to stay below them, too!
Your furniture won’t stay put. This tends to happen either if it wasn’t rotate-locked or if it’s not far enough away from the floor. Experiment with heights and make sure you’re locking it—it should stay!
The loft won’t reach the floor. This is something I actually didn’t explain properly the first time I made a video, but the trick is that you need to use a partition without any trim for the glitch. Base house walls and partitions with trim can’t support wall items on the trim part, so you can’t get the loft low enough to start your furniture on its journey.