Hvac experts--air return vent question

I'm renting a place and will be moving in next week. It is fairly small, so I'm carefully going over my furniture inventory and deciding what goes and what stays. One of the prime wall spots for a buffet that I have and would like to keep has an air return vent on it. How much space do you need to have between a price of furniture and the return vent?

No, I don't know where the others are or how many others there are.

If it just the return for that room and there are other return vents then I would put it at least an inch away from the wall. If it is the only return then I would put it at least three to four inches away.

Is the buffet on legs, or is it flush to the floor? If it's on legs there should be adequate airflow.

I'd give it 2-3 inches.

Returns frequently aren't ducted completely. If it's just a grille over an opening in the drywall, you could cut a similar hole in the same stud cavity about a foot down from the ceiling and put a similar grille over that. Chances are the landlord would never notice, and it would help even out the air temp across the room, as well.

Thanks for the responses. I can guarantee this landlord would notice if we changed things around, so no cutting into the wall.

I'll take a look at the buffet(s) in question and reevaluate based on leg height and placement of other return vents, if there are any.

Raise the buffet? I ran into a similar problem when I reconfigured my living room. My stereo speaker wanted to be right in front of the air grill. So I used a couple of cinder blocks sides-down so air could pass through and put the speaker on that.

Ian F wrote: Raise the buffet? I ran into a similar problem when I reconfigured my living room. My stereo speaker wanted to be right in front of the air grill. So I used a couple of cinder blocks sides-down so air could pass through and put the speaker on that.

Not happening.

Well, I'm not saying to use cinder blocks, although the ones I have are painted black and don't look too bad. Granted, right now my living room looks like a bicycle shop exploded so "looking bad" is relative.

But really... a bit more info would help: size and exact location of the return grill as well as the size/configuration of the buffet. Returns are fairly forgiving. Calculate the square inches of the grill size and make sure you have more than that amount accessing the grill behind the furniture.