I mean the ones you walk into and immediately think, I’m going to suffocate in here. The ones where the estate agents say it’s “cosy,” when really they mean you’ll be sleeping in a glorified cupboard. Danny and I recently moved into a terrace together and although I had known that the second bedroom was on the smaller side, I wasn’t fully prepared for just how small it was.
We’re talking 9-by-8 feet small. And I’m generously measuring in those dimensions. The previous owners had apparently used it as a storage cupboard.
I know this because when we moved in, there were dents in the walls from where boxes were stacked and the carpet had odd stains on it. They’d painted it this depressing shade of beige that sucked the soul out of any room.
And this was already the smallest room.
I remember when I first walked into the room after moving in. Standing in the doorway I was convinced that we couldn’t possibly make it work as an actual bedroom. There was a radiator that took up almost an entire wall.
We wouldn’t have anywhere to fit a bed. And the window was so tiny, it looked more for decoration than providing any ventilation. We joked that maybe we should just use it as a cupboard again, but I was determined to prove Danny wrong.
A key thing to decorating a small bedroom is that every decision you make matters. When decorating a large bedroom you can usually chuck furniture in and cross your fingers. But when decorating a small bedroom you have to think about literally everything.
From colours, furniture choices to even all your tiny décor decisions. These decisions can make or break your room into feeling bigger and cosy or even worse… smaller and cramped. The first thing I decided to tackle was the walls.
Those beige walls were depressing me. Literally. The standard advice I kept reading about painting small rooms was to paint them white to make them feel bigger.
Wrong. Painting small rooms white just makes them feel sterile and cold. It gives it that boring hotel room vibe.
I did the complete opposite. I actually went shopping for the ugliest brightest colour I could find. Instead I found this beautiful rich green shade that was being sold as clearance by B&Q.
They had a whole section of paint they labelled as “oops” paints. These were basically colours of paint that had been ordered by mistake (different colour, wrong shade, etc.) and weren’t the right colour for their displays. I picked one of the deeper green shades that would normally cost $40 something, but was on clearance for $15.
I only painted one wall with it – the wall behind where the bed would be placed – and it completely changed the feel of the room. Suddenly it wasn’t cramped anymore. It felt cozy and intimate.
It actually felt like a real grown up bedroom as opposed to us just sort of camping out in that box room. When my mother saw it she literally couldn’t understand why I had painted it that colour. She kept asking me why I had made it so dark.
But once she could see how it meshed with the rest of the room once it was decorated, she came around. When I fully appreciated just how little storage we would have in that room I went a little crazy on the storage options. We had no closets (our closets were in theMaster bedroom) and not a lot of floor space.
So I had to get creative about hiding all our stuff. I bought one of those storage containers that are advertised to “hold everything and stack vertically” at Wilko. They were on the cheap version that were $3 ea.
Then I wrapped them all in Christmas wrapping paper. Stick with me, it gets better. I found this AMAZING William Morris-esq wrapping paper from the clearance section at my local department store.
After wrapping my clear containers with Christmas paper, they actually looked like expensive-storage-boxes that you buy for $100 at Pottery Barn. And they stacked perfectly under the bed. Choosing the bed took us the longest.
A regular sized bed frame would have taken up nearly all of the room. Instead we decided to put our mattress on top of this platform I built with reclaimed wood. Remember how I told you about picking up wood from the guy updating his kitchen?
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Well, those adorable floor boards became the platform base I built our bed on top of. Sure I had to spend $20 on them and haul them back to Arnold in my boyfriend’s van, but it was totally worth it. After sanding down all the old paint and varnish I created this beautiful low-platform Japanese style bed frame that looks insane and gave us tonnes more storage underneath.
If I had to choose what changed the space the most it was probably changing out the lighting. There was this gross yellow overhead light that made everything feel clinical. I couldn’t afford to buy any “cool” light fixtures.
Instead, I filled it with table lamps and string lights. I picked up this gorgeous antique brass table lamp at a car-boot-sale for $8. Then I replaced the lamp shade with this cute simple drum lamp shade from Dunelm that was $15.
I hung some warm white string lights above my window sill and suddenly my room felt at least triple the size it was before. Especially at night. If you Google anything about decorating small rooms you’ll read about keeping it super minimalist. bullshit if you live in a small house with limited storage.
Luckily I had a bunch of shelves I could put up to hang some of our stuff on. I picked up these adorable floating shelves from Screwfix and had a friend of Danny’s cut me some wood to mount them too! I filled them up with books, plants and some decor items I had lying around.
This helped make the room look longer and gave me somewhere to display some of the things I loved instead of boring blank walls. Hang a mirror in small rooms? Heck yea you should hang a mirror in your small room.
It works. And you can get cheap ones at thrift shops. But here’s the thing.
Size matters. When you hang a large mirror in your room it bounces the light around! I found this HUGE old mirror at an estate sale for $12.
Yes it needed some touching up as the frame was pretty beat up, but a quick coat of white paint fixed that problem. Now I lean it up against my wall and it basically reflects all of the natural light that comes into the room. Which is great, because a lot of mornings it’s grey as fuck in Nottingham and every inch of sun you can get helps.
The last thing I wanted to do was add plants to the room. Everyone told me it was too small. It didn’t get enough light.
Plants would hate it. Watch me. I picked up this Snake Plant from Tesco for $6.
They’re like the Harlem Globetrotters of plants. They can’t be killed. I have them all over my house and they’re always alive.
I keep this guy on my windowsill and added a hanging pothos to one of my shelves. They’re both actually thriving. Adding plants to a small room really helps give it that “home” feeling.
Instead of being cramped up in a box you actually want to spend time there.
Curtains are also important! The ones we came with were literally tissue paper.
They didn’t block any light whatsoever and made the window look even smaller. I picked up some super thick curtains from the remnants section at John Lewis. I’m not even sure how much they normally cost ($50 a yard?!?) but I got enough material to make full length panels for $20.
I even sewed them myself. I found a really helpful YouTube tutorial that showed me how to do it. Not only did they improve the overall aesthetic of the room but they also made my window look twice as big.
Last but not least I found a rug on Facebook Marketplace that helped tie all the colours together. Literally no one used this rug and I picked it up for $18. The seller also happened to buy it to use for a room in their house before they just recently moved.
It ended up being the PERFECT shade of soft grey and covers all of my dust bunnies.
