There’s no reason you can’t have a gorgeous, designed home when you’re living in a smaller space! Smaller homes, condos, and apartments are often some of the most fun places to design because of the space restrictions. By thinking outside of the box, scaling your furniture correctly, concentrating on a few eye catching moments, and ensuring your space is multi-functional, you can achieve a beautiful, efficient home.
Let Your Design Freak Flag Fly
So often people think the design features of their condo or apartment – which are designed to please everyone and offend no one – are fixed elements that need to stay. However, there are so many easy – and often – affordable updates that can be made to make your home reflect you and your personality. After all, your home should be representative of your culture, family, and life experiences, not some bland copy-and-pasted space chosen by an anonymous designer.
Infuse Your Small Space with Your Personality
All white walls and boring bathrooms have no space in your life. After all, you aren’t boring! Your life has been full of rich experiences! So paint those walls! At Laurel Design Collective, we love teasing out our client’s personalities by learning more about their personal fashion style, their travels, their family culture, and heritage. We take elements from all of those non-interior design things and embody them in our design of a space.
Simple things like framing a collection of family and travel photos and putting them in a huge floor to ceiling gallery wall add instant interest and personality to a space. Our colorful craftsman client let her imagination go wild and we pulled together a happy palette of pinks, greens, corals, and blues for her home. No neutrals here!
Get Inspired By Your Closet
Your personal fashion is absolutely a manifestation of your personality, so take a look at your favorite pieces and think about how they could be translated to the interior design of your home. Maybe you love a leopard-print moment. Well let’s get some leopard-print pillows. Do you dress in all black, white, and neutrals? Bring some of those high-contrast moments into your furniture and design. Or perhaps you have a closet full of bold colors and high-fashion, high-impact pieces. Your home should then have those too!
Feature Bold Design Moments that Surprise and Excite
Even, calm, relaxing, design can have bold moments. No one’s space should be boring. So whether you’re bringing in interest with unique vintage finds or thick textures, bold has a place in every.
We’ve heard people say condos are too small to have big design features since it breaks up the flow from room to room. Well, who are you trying to fool here? A small space is a small space, and having all white walls throughout it isn’t really going to make it bigger, is it? So throw out the design rules and do what makes you smile! Consistent elements like a color palette or flooring can create a flow throughout your home while still allowing you design freedom.
The Right-Size Furniture for Small Spaces
We’ve all done it. We’ve bought the sofa that was either waaay too small or absolutely giant when it was in our space. It’s difficult to tell from online pictures and just reading measurements how an item will look in your space. Scale is essential in small spaces like condos or apartments, because with fewer pieces, everything needs to work harder.
Size Matters: Furniture Should Not Be Too Small or Too Big
Too small and your apartment now looks like a doll house. Too big and you can barely scootch around to get from one room to the next. In a small space like a condo, every inch counts and your furniture absolutely needs to be measured out. This can mean if you’re using painter’s tape to tape out the size of every piece on the floor prior to purchasing each and every item, or you’re working in a CAD program to layout the floor plan of the room, or even better: working with a designer who’s job is to get it right the first time!
Watch those Doorways!
Always triple check measurements of small spaces to make sure any furniture you purchase can make it into the room and around any corners enroute! Tight corners and hallways are especially notorious for preventing pieces from getting through. Every designer I know has a “oh shit, the sofa doesn’t fit in the house” story. Thankfully (knock on wood!) we’ve yet to have that happen to us.
Pulling Double Duty: Multi-Functional Pieces for Versatile Spaces
When you have a small space, your life isn’t small. You’re still a person with friends, family, hobbies, and a workout routine. Your space needs to function for all of your life! That means your furniture will be pulling double-duty. Carefully assess everything you bring into your home. Does it meet your needs? Could it also function for something else?
Everything Should Have at Least Two Functions
A back-to-back sofa chaise can also be a dining banquette. Every table could be a storage piece. A gallery wall can incorporate some fun and funky hooks for hanging your coat-of-the-week. Single use pieces should be kept for special occasions and stored away when not needed. Your everyday furniture should be versatile and suited to all your needs!
Create a Space that Works Hard to Fit Your Needs
Think through how your furniture can work harder for you. If you entertain a lot, do you need extra seating that can be pulled out when needed, but tucked away for easier circulation when you don’t have people over? Can that credenza in the hallway hold your workout gear so the hallway can transform into your yoga studio / weight lifting gym? What if a dresser tucked beside your sofa functions not only for a side table, but also holds your crafting supplies?
Small Spaces Can Be Efficient Ones that Work Hard to Make Your Life Easy.
Embrace your smaller space. It’s the perfect place to get super efficient and practical while also having fun with your design. By bringing in some bolder moments, choosing the right-size furniture, and making sure your furniture is multi-functional you can live large in your small space!