Small House? 5 Tips to Design Your House and Keep You Content
How We Designed a Small Shared Girls Room
Small rooms and small houses are some of the hardest spaces to design well. You have to fit a certain amount of necessary furniture in them, while also wanting to make the space feel like ‘you’.
It really forces you to get creative, not only with furniture layout, but with the color scheme because it is VERY easy to think you’ve just got a few things going on, and then WHOA, overload and it all makes the room look smaller.
Tips On How To Design A Small Room
- Don’t be afraid of dark colors. The color of the room matters less than how many colors/items are in the room. You can paint a room dark if you are going monochromatic and the other items in the room blend in with the walls. (The only reason we didn’t go dark in this girls room was because we went super dark in the bedroom next door and wanted something different)
- Don’t be afraid to paint the ceiling dark (it makes the ceiling recess and makes the space seem larger
- Use Mirrors. They will reflect the light and the space giving the impression of a larger space.
- Keep the floor uncluttered. Use a sconce or table lamp instead of a floor lamp. If you can, use floating pieces of furniture that give more space. Use unused space under a bunk bed for a crib or toy storage
- Don’t forget lighting. In this particular room, the ceiling pendant light and the table lamp give off enough light, even though it is a dark room with a north facing window- but if you had a slightly larger room, you would probably also want some can lights in the ceiling to brighten the space up.
- Don’t buy a tiny rug. Buy the largest rug that will fit in the space. Small rugs make a space seem even smaller. In this room, we only had room for a 4x6. If you are decorating a living room, I can guarantee a 4x6 will be too small…unless you are a tiny person and your couch is 2 feet long.
This shared girls room project in Grand Rapids Michigan, is one of the harder spaces I’ve designed because it is SOO small. Per code, a bedroom has to be wider than 7 feet. And this bedroom is like 7.5 feet.
Prior to experiencing the space, I designed a moodboard for the room- based off of some items I already owned and liked. I love lots of color, and wanted to incorporate color into the room.
Turns out the final result was exactly opposite of lots of color, yet it was one of my favorite rooms in the whole house.
First mistake in this was painting the ikea kura bed black. In a larger room, this would’ve looked great still- if the bed was less bulky, and more spindly like a jenny lind bed,(like the crib in the pic) I still think it would look great and not too overwhelming and dark.
With just too much color and too many things sticking out and the room closing in and feeling smaller, I decided to go mostly monochromatic and use pattern and texture to make the room interesting.
I had always loved this wallpaper from Hygge & West- I had contemplating using the blue version on the back of our kitchen island, (and then didn’t since I decided to do an extra row of cabinets for storage), and thought about using the black and white version in our tv room (but didn’t because wasn’t the vibe I was going for), so when I remembered they had a white and gold version I felt like I had cured cancer. (turns out figuring out a design conundrum doesn’t save any lives, but I’m not going to let that rain on my parade).
With that figured out, this is the moodboard I came up with. I wanted to accent with a little wood to bring a little something besides white- also to complement the wood pendant light and wood floor.
We already owned the white eames rocker and and the gold/wood circular table(which also is tub, so it doubles as the girls costume storage).
I bought a low white bunk bed from wayfair, and the cheapest white crib from ikea. We cut off the legs off the ikea crib so we could slide it under the bunk bed and voila! Two kids fit in an extremely small, space.
I choose a lucite bookshelf from CB2 for their books so it would blend into the wall and not stick out like a sore thumb-bonus is in another house, I can use this in an adult space. You could have the same effect by painting a bookshelf or dresser the same exact color as the wall. It will blend into the wall and make the space seem bigger.
What are your thoughts? Did you ever think you could have a functional room this small?