Maximizing Mini-Spaces

We called on the expansive brain power of these designers and architects for the biggest ideas in small-space living.

James Gauer, architect
Make sure your furniture is correctly scaled for your space. Most upholstered furniture is too big. A sofa as shallow as 28 inches (32 to 36 is standard) can be very comfortable. Don't be afraid to spend a little extra money on custom pieces when standard-size stuff just doesn't fit. The scale of our homes should derive from the real needs of our daily lives. Home should be the setting for life, not the measure of it.

Calvin Tsao, architect & designer
The first rule is: Stop thinking of your space as small! It's intimate, and that can bring a host of positives. We think of oversize (rooms, furniture, meal portions) as the standard, when in fact that's a terribly contemporary idea—today's small would have been sizable for most of human history. To make the most of your space, use the classical ideas of the vertical and horizontal. Create visual niches that lead the eye around: wall cutouts into other rooms, furnishings with reflectivity (mirrors, lacquers, gleaming metallics), course-textured fabrics for contrast and open storage to suggest depth. Think of your furniture in terms of lines rather than planes.

Azby Brown, author of The Very Small Home (Kodansha)
An essential idea—both physical and psychological—for small spaces is to avoid the urge to do everything. Instead, focus on one really big idea: How, essentially, do you live? What do you care about? If you love cooking, then go for a great kitchen and dining table, and maybe forgo a sofa altogether. If you never cook, don't build a gourmet kitchen! Maybe all you need is a coffeemaker, a microwave and bins for disposing of take-out containers. A tiny kitchen could allow for a larger, nicer bathroom. If that's how you best enjoy the space, it's not really a compromise.


Amanda Moore, designer
There's a wonderful market of smaller kitchen appliances that counterbalance the McMansion world of double dishwashers. Summit makes a refrigerator (the 375SS, 81"h x 24"w x 24"d) that is taller and skinnier than a standard model and gives an additional foot of counter space. Likewise with Viking's 24-inch ranges. The LG toaster-microwave oven combo (LTM9000) provides a great way to save countertop space.

Betty Wasserman, designer
If you're living in a studio and want to sleep on a sofa every night, there is precisely one model that is good enough to use as a bed: Todd Hase's Gerard sofa (toddhase.com). It's custom, so it's not cheap but you can order it to fit your space precisely. A bench is also an indispensable piece of furniture for a studio. It takes up little space, but provides extra seating, a makeshift buffet for cocktail parties and a good general plunking space for books, clothes, etc.

Jay Shafer, founder of Tumbleweed Tiny House Company
Several years ago I moved into a 6 1/2-by-10-foot home that I designed for environmental and economical reasons—but mostly because I didn't have the time or patience to maintain a large house anymore. Simplifying my living space has made my whole existence seem simpler and more manageable. My best advice for people looking to pare down is to get rid of everything that's not contributing to your happiness. Think of it this way: A small house is a big house with all the unnecessary parts removed.

Victoria Meyers, architect
1. Smooth out bumps and edges. Build storage flush with the wall, limit structural details and minimize clutter. The clean lines will allow your eye to "slip" around the space, making it feel larger. 2. Play with perceived depths. Dropping your ceiling a foot may seem antithetical, but in one project I did just that and then cut punch-outs in the ceiling. You couldn't tell if the ceiling extended one foot or 12 feet above the punch-outs; that height ambiguity makes a space feel larger. 3. Make sure there's connectivity between your indoor space and your outdoor space. Even if you have a view of a brick wall, put something near your window that picks up the color and texture of the brick. It will lead your eye out the window and expand your sense of the room.

Mark Dyson, architect
Rather than fill your precious space with big storage units, look around to see how you can make use of existing nooks and niches. In my own home, I looked at the stairway and thought, Wouldn't it be great if those were stacked drawers? So I removed the risers, supported each tread with brackets and then installed custom drawers with a simple pull for each stair. It's nearly invisible and a perfect place to hide shoes.

Editor's Choice

The wall-mounted Enköping table by Anna Larsson for Ikea takes up no floor space at all and opens to reveal one of four expansive images (31"h x 22"w x 23"d, $50).

Pierre Frey's Colette folding chair, beech upholstered in muslin, is an elegant version of a classic space-saver (34"h x 20 1/2"w x 15 1/2"d, about $425).

 

French designer Bertrand Pincemin's anodized aluminum Articulated Shelf 01 expands on rotating pivot joints to adjust to tight corners or curved walls (95"h x 12 1/2"w x 10"d, $1,745)

Shelving system, chair, table and room divider in one, space-saving Shelflife by London-based designer Charles Trevelyan is a marvel in lacquered MDF (70"h x 55"w x 14"d, $5,000).