It is during the second you place your arm out of bed, towards the wardrobe and feel it crash against the wall when you realise the bedroom is too small. Not when the agent breezily tells you it has “cosy proportions”, and certainly not when you’re dragging around a tape measure cursing as it repeatedly snaps back on your fingers. I have spent several years of my life cramped into bedrooms that could generously be described as “small”.
My very first flat came equipped with a bedroom so small that if you opened the wardrobe door you couldn’t walk around the bed. Fucking ingenious, past-me. I lived like that for six months, performing daily bedroom ballet where I scuttled sideways round my bed like some double-bed-short horizontal crab.
That room measured 8ft by 9ft. Sounds OK! …until you try and fit a decent-sized double bed, two bedside tables, wardrobe AND expect to be able to walk around in there.
Here’s what I learned about what too small is too small.
Disclaimer – I’m talking double beds here. Single beds obviously have less squeezed into them, but still, you want to be able to swing a leg over without kicking the other beds furniture. When you’re working with tiny bedrooms, square feet are nice but not the be-all-and-end-all.
Instead, focus on the width of the room and ask yourself – can you walk around the bed easily? Can you open dresser drawers without having to close the door first? These might sound like fancy-trousers things to worry about, but when you’ve lost your shoe because you can’t see over your bajillion dressers every morning, trust me you will think otherwise.
I mentioned my bedroom was 8ft by 9ft above. That’s the smallest I’d suggest making your bedroom if you like SMALL. That gives you a total of around 90 square feet.
Which sounds terrible (and trust me it is), but it is possible if you’re picky about what you fit in there. I lived in a room that was 9×11 for two years; it wasn’t huge but it wasn’t making me want to hurl myself out of the window each morning either. If you’re trying to be cute and make your bedroom roughly that size, just ensure you can keep at least two sides of the bed with a clear walkway of around 2 feet (or your shoe will poke you in the eye as it sticks out from underneath the bed).
If you can make your bedroom 10 feet by 11 feet – that dreamy 110 square feet – then life is much easier for you. I once viewed a flat that was that size. Having just moved out of the 8x9mbedroom-cum-crab-shuffle-space I thought I was looking at a palace.
It was wonderful to have enough room for a full-sized double bed and two bedside tables (NO MORE SIDE TABLE ARGUING WITH YOUR HOUSE PARTNER!!!) and still have room squeeze in a small dresser or maybe even a chair. With small bedrooms, every furniture decision is a gamble. Will that adorable dresser you fell in love with on Facebook Marketplace fit?
Querying whether or not your bed is too big is almost a nightly occurrence. Trust me I did the math on buying a king- size bed once.. and then again when I stupidly ordered a chest of drawers that was 6 foot wide without measuring the distance between my bed and wall. The drawers arrived; I excitedly assembled them…and then realised I couldn’t reach the window without clambering over my bed.
Rookie mistake. Average double beds are around 4.5 foot wide by 6.25 foot long. Add a bed frame on top of that, and you’re looking at around 5ft by 6.5ft of floor space you can’t use.
Allow for at least 2 feet clearance on either side of the bed that you’ll regularly use (Which lets face it is almost always both long sides if you have a partner) then at least some distance at the foot of the bed for levitating yourself into bed each morning. Your bedroom suddenly doesn’t feel that generous anymore is it? I tried them all.
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Beds with storage underneath? Perfect until you need something from the storage and now you have to move your entire bed. Platform beds?
Dreamy until you realise you have zero space to stash stuff underneath. Wall mounted nightstands? Space saving but my backside genuinely bruises on some of the cheaper models out there.
The best solution I found was opting for a bed frame with less “presence”. My old bed frame was a standard wooden frame that sat around 18 inches off the floor. It massively dominated the room.
Low-profile beds (The type that often come as part of a “platform bed” deal) sit closer to the ground. Around 12 inches for most. It made SUCH a difference to the feel of the room.
Everything felt higher, less cluttered. Unless you opt for one of those super-planky beds with minimal frame. Worth mentioning.
Storage is king when it comes to small bedrooms. Under-bed storage boxes are lifesavers – I keep all my jumpers and bulky winter stuff in some see-through plastic containers under the bed. Because when you can’t see whats under there, you end up thinking you own more jumpers than you actually do and spend 20 minutes digging around for that one jumper that’s irritatingly hidden at the back of your taupe jumper box on the opposite side of the bed to you.
Wall hanging shelves are great too! Especially those chest-high ones that sit sort of like floating cabinets against the wall. Just don’t put them too high or too low – you’ll just bang your head/mouseboard every time you walk past.
Lighting. Everyone forgets about lighting until their tiny bedroom is lit by a bulb that doubles up as a torture device. I used to just have the overhead light on in my bedroom and felt like someone was constantly interrogation me about my sock drawer.
Now I have a bedside lamp, some fairy lights (Yep. I’m that person.) and a small lamp on my chest of drawers.
Three levels of light instead of one has really helped open up the room.
Finally – one thing I think most people are too scared to admit when it comes to small bedrooms… is LESS IS MORE. I know. It kills me too.
But that reading chair you never sit in because “the bed is comfier” isn’t doing anything for your bedroom other than taking up valuable space. Same goes for that second dresser you bought because you couldn’t decide between two pretty similar ones. Trust me, doubling up on mediocre furniture doesn’t make your bedroom feel more organised, it just stresses you out when you try and fit your crap into it.
My new bedroom is about 120 square feet. So… maybe 10×12 or 11×11. At that size you can actually fit a double bed, two bedside tables, a wardrobe OR dresser AND still walk around without banging your knee on the desk you forgot you put against the wall.
TLDR; Small bedrooms are tricky AF but they don’t have to feel less than comfy. Measure your room a few times, double-cheque you can actually fit what you want and try not to knock your knees on your neatly hidden baggage of despair everytime you try and get out of bed.
