If your home is one of the many in Britain where living space is at a premium, you’ll want to know exactly how this space can be maximised. In this article, we’ll take a look at ten laws of small space living which will help you to do exactly that.
1. Keep it tidy
It should go without saying that an untidy home will quickly begin to feel like a crowded one. After all, pieces of clutter, however small, will build up over time to form a sizeable obstacle to your search for open space. Tidiness, aside from being an inherently good thing, is an excellent way of maintaining a feeling of openness and expansiveness in your living room.
Perhaps the best way to keep your home tidy is make a conscious effort to change your behaviour. If you’re not naturally inclined toward tidiness, this can be a difficult task, but it’s a worthwhile one if it leads to an open, uncluttered living room!
2. Keep it clean
Of course, keeping things tidy is just one half of an inseparable duo of housekeeping activities – you’ll need to keep things clean, too. There are myriad ways in which dirt, grime and other unsightly substances can be introduced into your home. No matter how stringently you vet the shoes of those who enter it, it’s inevitable that you’ll have to get that vacuum cleaner out at some point and address the situation.
The best way to do this is regularly, in order to prevent the situation from growing out of hand. If you’re proactive, you can easily keep on top of the situation. Fortunately, this is one instance in which living in a smaller space can actually be a boon, since there’s a great deal less to clean than there is in a larger one.
3. Organise your home
Once you’ve gotten everything stowed away, you’ll have time to review exactly whether they’re stowed in the right places. It might be that tidying was unnecessarily troublesome, and that you can immediately think of a way in which the task might have been easier through slight adjustments in your storage arrangements. If such an idea should occur to you, then go ahead and rearrange things now. It’ll be worth spending the extra time once you’ve created the space that will make future tidying sessions that much easier.
4. Pay attention to colours
There are many factors which one should consider when selecting a colour scheme for the home. Not least among these is the fact that some colours will contribute to a greater sense of claustrophobia, while others will help to give a living space more room to breathe.
In general, lighter colours will result in a greater sense of open space, while darker ones will have the opposite effect. Of course, with something like colour, the illusion of space (or a lack thereof) will not be the only thing that informs the decision. One should also consider the lighting in a room – along with your own personal taste and the colour of the furniture that’s already in the room. If you’ve got your heart set on an oppressive shade of burgundy, then you should be prepared for a feeling of reduced space.
5. Pay attention to lighting
As we’ve noted, the way a room is lit can have an enormous impact on the overall impression of space one gets while sitting inside it. For this reason, it’s essential to consider the impact of the lighting arrangements in a room. Making use of brighter lamps – possibly those which employ LEDs rather than the older style halogen bulbs – will allow light to flow into every darkened cranny in your living space. On the other hand, a small light source – perhaps even a natural one, like a candle – will allow the room to remain darkened, and dampen the sensation of space.
The best way to achieve good results is through experimentation, since every room will react differently under different lighting conditions. Try out a few different solutions before settling on the one that works for you.
6. Make use of Vertical Space
When you’re coming up with space to store all of your things, you’ll likely be considering all of the floor space you have at your disposal. The more possessions you have, the more space you’ll take up.
We can help to free up extra space by thinking in more than two dimensions. By exploiting the verticality of our living space, it’s possible to find homes for those items which might otherwise have been stored elsewhere. If the tops of your bookshelves, wardrobes and kitchen cabinets are empty, then fill them with those items which you can’t fit anywhere else. Similarly, if the spaces beneath your beds, tables and TV stands are empty, then fill those, too.
You can also help to free up valuable space by making use of your walls, as well as your floor. By installing extra, tall pegboards, racks, shelves and cabinets, you can create huge amounts of extra storage while consuming barely any of your floor space. That’s a great way of getting something for nothing – and its one which few homeowners exploit to the fullest.
7. Don’t skimp on larger items of furniture
If you’re looking to economise on space, it might seem wise to try to limit the size of your furniture. After all, smaller items take up less room, and so theoretically might offer more floor space. This assumption might seem a fair one, but in practice it proves misleading. Often, by buying smaller items, one tends to subconsciously fill the space by buying more of them. A miniature coffee table, for example, might seem in need to complementing with another table in a different part of the room. Succumb to this temptation and before long you’ll have a room which is utterly packed with tiny little items.
For this reason, perversely, it’s often the larger items that end up being best for smaller spaces. They lend the room a focal point, and help to avoid the necessity of using smaller items to compensate for the aesthetic shortfall. So, don’t automatically overlook those larger items just for the sake of it – they may well make the difference between an ordered, spacious living space and a cluttered, stifling one.
8. Use a mirror or two
A long-standing truism in the world of interior design is that the impression of space can be created in any interior through the use of mirrors. If your mirror is a larger one, then all the more so. Certain rooms, like bathrooms and dressing spaces, call for 
the use of a mirror – and so it makes sense to plump for one that’s slightly bigger than your requirements dictate.
By covering a wall in a mirror, you can create the impression that you’ve got twice as much space as you actually have. If you’ve got two on adjacent walls, then this effect is magnified.
It’s worth noting, however, that doing this too much can result in an almost ridiculous effect – and so be sure to be sparing when it comes to reflective surfaces: a few larger ones will give you pleasing results, a roomful of them will make your home look like a fairground attraction.
9. Use double-duty furniture
If you’re living under quite severe space restrictions, it’s hugely advantageous to make use of furniture which can be easily stowed away when it isn’t needed; or, better yet, furniture which is able to do more than one job.
This might come in the form of a beanbag, which can be brought out whenever there are extra guests to accommodate. After you’re done, you can simply stow the beanbag away somewhere out-of-sight. The same is true of camp-beds, z-beds and futons – if you’ve got guests staying the night, you can unfold any of these to form a convenient place to sleep at short notice. As we’ve already noted, the underside of tables, beds and desks can also double as effective storage space, which removes the necessity of unsightly drawers and cabinets in your living space.
By simply ensuring that each item in your home is capable of performing more than one role, you can reduce the overall amount of stuff your home require – and thereby free up huge amounts of space!
10. Spend time outdoors
Though it should probably go without saying, it’s worth reflecting on one simple solution to your space-economising woes: leave the house. If you’re cooped up indoors all day – perhaps because you work from home, or because you’re a full-time at-home parent, it stands to reason that you’ll begin to feel as though the walls are closing in. That being the case, it’s important to get outside and take in the open air every once in a while.
A home is just the space you live in, and so it follows that by doing a little more of that living outdoors, you’re sure to fend off that cabin fever!
