If you’ve been reading our flat blogs for a while you know we’re fans of small spaces. Sam’s little bedroom taught me a lot about maximising square footage – mostly, what *not *to do when furnishing and designing a smaller room to avoid some rookie mistakes: Your bedroom is smaller than you think. Ok so my bedroom isn’t actually tiny – but it’s pretty small.
Like I actually took out a tape measurer and know IT IS SMALLER THAN THE AVERAGE WORKING DESK smaller. When I first moved into my place I wanted to force all my old furniture from my last flat into my new room – king sized bed (I’m tall and I dream), matching IKEA night stands, bulky dresser (mum would havethrowawayknowhat if I didn’t) and an armchair because I thought I’d be that guy who reads novels in bed. Spoiler alert: not that guy.
I ended up tripping over my own feet every morning trying to navigate around my monstrous bed to reach my closet. Girlfriend at the time thought I was doing some sort of modern dance routine every morning just trying to get dressed.
Lowkey this was not the vibe I was going for.
What I learned from my own personal panic room is that small bedrooms work differently than just downsizing a large bedroom into Photoshop. You can’t just make everything smaller and magically expect it to work. It’s like trying to cram a Sunday roast inside a sandwich.
Nope. Moving your bed away from the wall is key. The first change I made was moving my bed.
Everyone instinctually places their bed up against a wall to maximise space, right? Wrong. Sure it works sometimes, but nine times out of ten it just creates more problems.
In my layout– don’t laugh I know it sounds insane with ONLY 12sqm – I actually moved my bed OUT 20 centimeters away from the wall. FriendDev lost his shit when I told him I was doing this. But that sliver of space created behind my bed was JUST ENOUGH space to fit this skinny console table I found on Facebook Market.
Perfect for stacking books, phone charger, lamp I read with at night and open back there tricks your brain into thinking the room has more square footage. Don’t sleep against the wall! I tried the corner bed setup in my last flat and it worked great – but you have to be careful.
Wedged my old double bed into the corner of my bedroom and used that “L” shape that cut off the two walls to do shelving/storage – actually looked pretty damn good too haha. Kinda like the fancy scandi bedrooms you see on Pinterest. The trick was making sure I could still easily get into bed without performing some insane Ross-from-Friends parkour routine on my bed frame.
I laughed about this when it happened to me but trust me you WILL climb over the footboard of your bed if it’s even an inch too big for that space between wall and bed. Neighbours thought I was doing late night calisthenics or something. Another thing you don’t realise until you’re awkwardly jumping around your bedroom like a rabbit bruising your knees because you hit the same corner of your bed frame every single day is how important traffic flow is.
I started visualizing paths I’d take throughout my room on a daily basis – path from door to window to open curtains, path from bed to closet to get dressed in the morning, path from dresser to bedroom mirror when I got ready etc. Having furniture block these natural pathways is like putting a speed bump in a small room. Girl I have a friend named Sarah who lives in a studio flat in ancoats and she positioned her bed perpendicular to the longest wall in her room.
Sounds stupid but it allows you to see ALLLLL of the space when you enter the room making it feel so much bigger. Basically your bed acts like a divider in your room creating “zones” without having to actually build walls or spend your life savings on some sort of JapaneseDividerThingy that’s totally adorable but take up SO MUCH ROOM. Consider how you’ll store your junk.
Oh boy where do I begin with you storage disasters. Biggest DON’T of them all – buying a fuckongissorium ottoman bed with storage underneath. Never once occurred to me– clearly STILL have not learned from my aforementioned measuring mishaps – that you need ROOM to actually OPEN storage drawers!
In my room they could barely open to the halfway point before they’d smush into the other wall. Basically turned into the worlds most convenient – and expensive – night stand. Now I’m obsessed with storage that serves double duty or goes up instead of out.
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Current “nightstand” is actually a medium-sized IKEA book shelf that I turned on its side. Gives me a place to set stuff on TOP but also created like 8 different cubbies for random junk. Ottomon at foot of bed stored extra blankets but I also have floating shelves above in the dead space where two walls meet.
Most people overlook that weird dead corner but if you think vertically it’s GOLD. Ever since I switched to buying LLEGGED furniture everything has changed. Literally all of my furniture (dresser, nightstand, bedframe) has insanely skinny legs so you can see underneath them.
Creates an illusion of space because there isn’t anything for your eye to stop at when it travels throughout the room. Kinda like the visual equivalent of wearing stripes to appear taller. Works.
Mirrors are your friend…but placement is everything. Everyone yells about putting mirrors in your room to create the illusion of space. Trust me, it works.
But where you hang that mirror is important. I originally had this ginormous mirror hung over my bed thinking it would double my space. Instead all I saw was my messy unmade bed when I woke up in the mornings.
Major buzzkill. Now I have a tall and narrow mirror positioned where it can catch natural light coming in from my small window and reflect light down further into my room. Better lighting AND I don’t have to look at my laziness first thing every morning.
DECLUTTER The biggest lesson I learned is when I stopped trying to fit SO MUCH shit into my bedroom and only allowed things that truly deserved the real estate. Decorative pillows that usually just ended up on floor? Gone.
Second Nightstand that made my room feel cluttered and confined? Gone thank god. Now if something doesn’t serve a purpose or isn’t beautiful I say bye-bye.Thinking of decorating your own small bedroom?
Lighting is EVERYTHING. Once I had narrowed down all my furniture and absolutelyneeded in my room I started playing around with lighting. Ceiling mounted light fixtures are ALWAYS going to make a tiny room feel like a police interrogation.
Try layering different types of lighting throughout your room. Reading light clipped to wall above bed instead of using a table lamp I could knock over all the time, background light with small desk lamp on dresser,battery powered string lights around window *yep I’m that millennial now – heard it plenty but honestly they brightened up that corner BCSOI bought different styles of lighting vs one overhead light. Pick the RIGHT colours.
Colours took me the longest to master in my room. Painted the walls this beautiful navy blue I saw in a décor magazine and thought would make my room feel cozy and chic.
Put that dark colour in my mostly windowless coffin and it felt like I was sleeping on a submarine.
NOTHING feels like it closes off a room faster. Try to keep light colours on walls to better reflect natural light but add darker colours with your bedding/curtains. Light walls/dark textiles is an easy way totrick your brain into thinking your rooms larger.
Accept that your bedroom is small. This one really got me once I started designing my room. Instead of constantly fighting against the lack of space, lean into it by making your bedroom intentionally COZY instead of accidentally cramped.
Every piece of furniture has a purpose. Every “storage solution” is doing double duty. Nothing is in the way when you move about your room.
It took me FOREVER – seriously way too many measuring tape traumatized myself with than one human should ever own – and failed dozens of pieces of furniture before I learned how to properly make a small bedroom work for me. But dont settle for living in a closet you sleep in either.
