When I first moved into my flat, I pushed my bed up against three walls to fit it through my bedroom door. It’s a proper double bed too. The room itself was advertised by estate agents as a “cosy” second bedroom.
Meaning it had approximately nine foot of floor space, four of which was taken up by a shallow cupboard. My solution? PANIC.
DENIAL. Rage-buy dozens of funky bedskirts online before coming to my senses.
I wasn’t going to spend my twenties sleeping on a futon.
I’ll admit that tiny rooms can be “cozy.” Problem is, nobody uses that word when they’re actually living in a teeny home on a budget. You know who loves tiny rooms? Minimalists who can fit all their worldly possessions into the Chelsea closet.
I had about three weeks worth of clothes strewn across every available surface, which meant I was constantly bumping into my wardrobe door every time I tried to get out of bed. I spent the first few nights weaving around like a crab just to access my wardrobe. Until, I rotated the bed 15 degrees away from the wall.
Diagonal, but not actually diagonal. I know it sounds silly, but hear me out. By simply angling my bed away from the wall I could actually walk around on both sides.
I didn’t have to perform a horizontal yoga pose every time I wanted to throw my clothes in the wash. Once I did that, I could fit a thin console table behind my headboard. It wasn’t much, but at least I had someSurfaceAreaToPlace aesthetically pleasing items besides a lamp and my phone charger.
Speaking of bedsides… Traditional bedside tables are overwhelmingly bulky. Nobody has the space for that in a small bedroom. They take up valuable floor area, and make the room feel even smaller.
Instead of buying nightstands, I installed floating shelves high enough up that they lined up with the top of my mattress. Two of them – about 18 inches wide – provided shallow shelving for everything except my actual bed tray. Total cost?
Probably £25 for both of them, including hardware. They made the room look “done” rather than like I settled for shelf storage because I had to. The storage space in my bedroom is the one thing I really didn’t hack: My clothes are housed in three different areas.
My wardrobe came with the room, and let me tell you something about those ridiculously small built-in closets they give you in UK flats: They’re joke dimensions. I could fit about five of my favourite dresses and a bulky coat. That’s it.
The vacuum storage bags? Fun idea in theory. Horrible in execution.
Everything that came out of those suckers was wrinkled inside and out, and they smelled like sad plastic. The best solution was adding tall shelving that stretched from the floor to the ceiling. Adjustable brackets meant I could make the spacing as wide or as narrow as I needed.
The bottom two shelves are for shoes, bags, and accessories. The middle section is reserved for folded jumpers and t-shirts, stored in fabric bins. Up top?
Out of season clothing and bulky coats. The whole set-up cost me about £120, but it tripled the amount of storage I had access to. It also made my bedroom look custom built rather than jammed full with my crap.
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Now, about that boob light that came installed in my ceiling. Sure, it provided ample lighting when I actually needed the room to light up like a football stadium, but most of the time I wanted softer options. So I layered my light sources: The main overhead light for when I actually needed to find something buried at the bottom of my closet, the lamp on my little console table for medium lighting, string lights atop my shelving unit for ambience, and a small reading light clipped to the underside of my floating shelf.
Once I mastered layering my light sources, my room became instantly bigger (and more expensive.) Trust me on this. Mirrors are supposed to make small spaces feel bigger. The catch is, most people don’t have one wall large enough to devote entirely to a mega mirror.
My solution was embracing a cluster of smaller mirrors in varying frame styles. Brass, coloured wood, sunburst. Toss them all up in a gallery wall format on the wall opposite your window.
It creates visual interest that distracts you from the smallness of the room, yes. But it also bounces light around in a way that flat white walls cannot. Trust me on this one too: Paint colour is everything.
I wanted everything white so the room would feel bright and airy. What I ended up with looked clinical and super small. Instead of painting every wall white, I painted three walls a creamy white.
Then I painted the wall behind my bed a dark sage green. Darker colours can work in small spaces if you offset them correctly. The deep green actually made the wall that it was on recede, creating the illusion that my room was longer than it actually was.
Texture was another way I found to add depth without taking up more space. Think chunky knit blankets, light curtains instead of heavy drape-y ones, linen rugs. My favourite hack was buying a rug that wasn’t quite as wide as my bed frame, but extended out from under the bed by another twelve inches or so.
Adding texture to every available surface gave the illusion of depth, making my room feel rich and inviting. My windows were too narrow to allow for full curtains without looking… well, like narrow windows. So I mounted my curtain rod as close to the ceiling as I could, and extended it past the window frame on either side.
The curtains hung down, pooling slightly on the floor when they were open, but you couldn’t see where the window ended. It’s such an interior designer trick, but it totally works. My windows look twice as big as they actually are.
Lesson learned: Trying to shove every piece of furniture you own into your room will make it look cluttered. It took me forever to realise that some things had to go. All of it.
That oversized armchair I fell in love with? Gone. Thrown out the clothes that didn’t fit on my shelves?
Gone too, unfortunately. Invest in less, and enjoy your space more.
A lot of people say they love my bedroom now.
It’s cosy. Homey. Functional.
But they don’t know the tricks I used toMaximiseSpaceWithoutCrying every cabinet installation or the rugs I spent hours eyeballing at the store before buying. They don’t know how I had to return that mirror because it was too wide to span the space I wanted it too. OrMattdroppedachairwhenIcarelesslystackedstuffonit one time a chair literally fell over when I piled too much stuff on it.
But that’s okay. My space works for me now. Sure, it’s still not large, but it definitely isn’t cramped anymore.
Who knows? Maybe you’ll learn a thing or two for when you move into your first teeny-tiny flat.
