Where things go

A rabbit's day has a shape to it: rest, eat, use the toilet, move around, chew something. A setup works when each of those has a place, and doesn't when they're all happening in the same square metre.

We think about it as three zones.

The base zone.  Somewhere enclosed, predictable and theirs — a hutch, a castle, a covered corner. This is where they sleep and retreat to. It should be the quietest part of the room and it should never be where you reach in to pick them up.

The food and toilet zone.  Rabbits almost always eat and use the toilet at the same time, so these two belong together, not apart. Litter tray with the hay rack directly over or beside it. This single change fixes more litter-training problems than anything else we recommend.

The roaming zone.  The space outside the other two, where they move, play and chew. This is the one most people get wrong by making it unlimited. A rabbit with the whole house and no structure is usually more anxious, not less.

The order matters.  Build the base zone first, then the food and toilet zone, then open up the roaming space. Done the other way round — free run first, structure later — you're trying to add boundaries to territory a rabbit has already claimed, which is much harder.

Distance between them.  Rabbits prefer their toilet away from their bed. Keep the base zone and the food and toilet zone a metre or two apart where the room allows. In a small room, a divider or the hutch itself can do that work.

Cables.  Anything at floor level in the roaming zone will eventually be tested. Protectors buy you reaction time rather than making cables rabbit-proof — plan the roaming zone so the worst cables aren't in it.