How to Decorate Small Spaces
Whether you’re living in a one-bedroom in New York, a mansion with a small guest room, an off-grid tiny house in the middle of nowhere, or your first bachelor suite after moving out of your parent’s house, you may find yourself scratching your head, wondering how the hell you’re ever going to make this small space feel open and inviting. Decorating small spaces can be a real challenge because many standard interior decorating conventions are null to the limited real estate available to work with. As a result, small spaces are constantly misdecorated. This gives them a bad rep despite a whole world of design possibilities at your disposal. In this article, we will discuss some great techniques for organizing and decorating small spaces, whether it’s your bedroom, living room, hallway entrance, or all of the above.
Proportionally Sized Furniture
If you only have 350 square feet (or less!) to work with, putting in a couch that takes up 60 square feet wouldn’t be wise… that’s over 15% of your space in one piece of furniture. Contrary to what some believe, having big furniture in your room will not trick you into thinking that the space itself is massive; all you will be left with is a cramped room with little space to move. Rather than go down this lackluster road, you can instead find some furniture that proportionately fits your space. Rather than opting for a big couch, consider pairing a love seat with a cozy chair. Although taking up roughly the same amount of floor space, the second pairing will allow for more options in positioning that will help take up as little of important space as possible. The same rule applies for about everything. Try slightly taller and skinnier shelves instead of ones that are short and fat. Look at smaller coffee tables, and consider a compact dining table that extends. Finally, perhaps refrain from enormous lamps and other floor-level or table-top decorations. If you choose the route of proportionality, you may be surprised by how large the space can actually feel, even after you’ve filled it.
Dynamic Furniture
Clutter will be your worst enemy in a small room. If you have dozens of items that only serve singular purposes, you will be surprised by how quickly your space gets filled to the brim. Instead, do your best to find items that serve as many purposes as possible. More simply. the more of your home “tools” that can be used as decorations, the better. For example, having beautiful mugs, pots/pans, plates, or bowls that can be displayed out in the open offers easy decorations in your kitchen as well as more room for storage for your less aesthetic stuff. On the furniture side of things, try and find coffee tables, side tables, and other pieces that can double as storage space. The more discreet and dynamic your storage solutions are, the less additional space you will need to take up with shelves and drawers in the future.
Light Colour Schemes > Dark Colour Schemes
Darker furniture (especially if they're big) absorbs light and make a space feel closed off and small. Colour schemes that are lighter, on the other hand, will reflect light making the space feel more open and inviting. With that in mind, try your best to keep your space light and bright. This is especially critical with rooms that receive little natural lighting, and feel more closed off by nature.
Mirrors
Hanging on the coattails of the previous example, mirrors also do a phenomenal job of making spaces feel more spacious. The first main reason for this is the same as the previous example; mirrors reflect light phenomenally, which allows any natural light in the room to brighten the place up as much as possible, making the room feel more open. Secondly, mirrors will reflect whatever is in front of them back (go figure!), meaning mirrors can easily create the optical illusion that your space is far bigger than it is, because well, the space is getting reflected back at itself… Science!
Get Your Furniture Off The Ground (Especially Your Bed!)
Getting furniture with legs allows for more floorspace to be seen. This will effectively make your space look larger because there is physically more visible. More area for light to cover, more room to walk in, more subtle storage spots (and more surfaces to clean...yay!). In a small bedroom, this is hypercritical, especially for your bed. By far your largest piece of furniture, the monstrosity that is your bed can suck the space out of your room if you’re not careful. To counteract this as much as possible, do your best to get your bed frame off the ground. This will allow you to store bulky items like your suitcase by neatly tucking them underneath. The other route that you could take goes slightly against the header of this section, however, we will let it slide because well, we wrote it. If you choose a bed frame with built-in storage, then don’t worry about elevating it. This way, you’re able to utilize that space and rid yourself of any shelving or drawers that you no longer need, freeing up other floorspace.
Use Height to Your Advantage
When you don’t have a lot to work with in terms of floor space in your home, it’s important to be creative in your use of height. Rather than keeping wide, short storage spaces, try using tall and skinny shelves. This will create the most bang for your floorspace buck, and allow for more total storage if needed. This goes for artwork too; try keeping any three-dimensional art pieces up high, and feel free to hang artwork higher than you may normally. This will make the most of the limited space you have, and draw focus up high instead of down toward the limited space.
By no means is decorating tiny spaces easy, but it can definitely be rewarding once you nail it. Unlike large and open rooms, which you can basically decorate by throw all your furniture in willy nilly, decorating small rooms is impossible to do well by accident. It’s easy to run out of room if you’re not careful, however, a little bit of intentionality can go a long way. Like most things, the 80/20 rule applies. If you were to follow even 20% of our above tips, then you would easily receive an 80% more spacious feeling room. With that said, the fact that you’ve gotten this far into the article without getting bored means that you’re probably going to try more than 20% of our ideas. If that’s the case, then the sky is the limit for you, and we’d love to see what you come up with! Tag @livingedgedesignbc in all of your interior design related posts on instagram, and we may feature you on our page! We look forward to seeing what you come up with!