Solving Small Space Mistakes In Easy Ways
What are the typical big mistakes in tiny spaces?
It starts with furniture, the wrong scale, insufficient lighting, or dismal lighting, not maximizing your vertical surfaces.
How heavy or dark window treatments are The wrong color palette, and the last is tiny carpets.
Dealing in a tiny space, you have to go with it, work with it, and maximize it.
Chose the right furnishings in your small tiny space
The most important thing with that is scale, and does it do the right things for what you need, what do you need in this small space, you need storage space. Scale is super important.
Furnishings have to do two things have the correct scale, And they have to be as often as possible multipurpose.
What does that mean? It means when you’re in a small space, you need storage options everywhere you can find them.
Let’s look at a couple of things that would work well in small spaces.
I love this platform bed super low to the ground because often small spaces will come with lower ceiling heights, which is unfortunate.
Ensure everything is dealing with the scale both up and down and across, so platform beds are great.
I like this iron bedstead that to open through that all kind of works nicely.
I love this little West Elm chair with the superlight legs below it; that’s great, as well, in terms of a lighter scale for space.
And again, you want to get things and then, of course, and then also feel a little bit lighter.
The second thing you also want to look for has that minor extra storage component for your furniture to do for you.
Work it in like this bedroom bench on the end of the bed, which is great because it has that lower shelf where you can stash, a couple of baskets, and a couple of books that are all great.
A lot of times, you’ll find those little Ottomans or proves that the lift-off lid that can work as a coffee table, as well as store some stuff that you don’t want to see inside that’s great,
or I’ve even found this little coffee table which I love very sort of mid-century modern that has the potluck side to it, and you can throw all kinds of stuff in that, that’d be great.
There are also little side tables that have, like, kind of magazine racks; there are lots of great options that are made for folks in small spaces; make sure you’re maximizing it.
The next item that you want to make sure you address in a small space is your lighting
Now, for natural lighting, if you don’t have a lot of it, you have to make sure that you’re adding
it in, and you want to do it in layers.
There are three different types of lighting;
There’s ambient which is general lighting,
There’s a task or work-oriented lighting, which is often like under cabinet lighting things in kitchens.
And then there’s accent lighting, which is decorative fixtures sconces those kinds of things.
Make sure you’re maximizing ceiling light or ambient lighting as best you can;
even if you don’t have a fixture up there, you can put one up there and run a wire across paint it out. Make sure that you get as much light coming out of them as possible.
Sconces; for small spaces, they are a little bit of a trick of a wall detail, especially when they have a clear globe you can get the light shining all the way around.
You’re looking for light options as much as you can.
Anything you can underline is always significant, with a little bit of a LED strip; that’s always a good thing to consider.
Think about task lighting, like little reading light beside the bed, which is excellent.
That’s great, you can adjust it right at the bed, but it gives you another layer of light that you can work within the space.
Remember to keep everything on dimmers; that’s always super important.
This layered effect, changing the emphasis, where the eye goes when you’ve lost your natural light in the evenings, so it’s super important to pay attention to lighting.
A designer pro tip to help expand your lighting and is the use of a mirror.
Get a mirror across from your natural light source in the room; they’ll double the opportunity for light expansion in the space.
Suppose you can light that at night; you doubled your ability to get lumens into space, making the room feel larger. So there’s a lot of great options there.
Just make sure you employ that one that’s a super-secret great tip.
What does it mean to maximize your vertical storage?
Make sure every nook and cranny is a workable storage space, and it’s the same way when you’re in a small area; we have to maximize our walls so that we can do the same thing.
Make sure that visually, you’re not making more clutter, so go to the ceiling with the shelves.
I love the look of this; you can go all the way up with things, that’s all great, but the key to it is making sure that what goes on the shelves and those shelves look even and tidy and organized.
Put some lovely decor and coordinated it together so that it looks excellent and intentional.
It doesn’t make space feel more cluttered or smaller, or perhaps you can do a coordinated set of light baskets and bowls together.
Good look over-the-door storage, which you can put into a bathroom, those are great tiny sneak-a-do solutions, and you can get all kinds of shower stuff and extra toiletries and things going on the inside of the bathroom door.
If you need to go all the way to the ceiling, What were they did?
This one works over the door, and it’s got great shelves up at the top.
That’s a perfect solution because that’s often dead space above a door, and if you want to pop in slender shelves, throw some books or some baskets up there.
Things may be that you don’t reach all the time.
That’s a great way to use your walls to your best advantage and still keep the space feeling expansive, but you’ve got all your stuff stored.
Window treatments for small spaces
When you’re in small areas, your best rule of thumb for Window treatments is to go as light and airy as possible.
Seriously, you are trying to expand the space, and you don’t want to close it down by putting big heavy door panels in there.
How these window treatments make those windows almost disappear in these pictures, which is excellent.
If you don’t have a privacy issue, you can consider skipping window treatments altogether.
Consider overall color palettes for small area
Making a small space feel larger is always to go lighter, softer neutral with as few changes as possible.
Look at this beautiful bedroom, it just blows out, and it’s not very big.
This lovely room with this very soft blue cast to the carpet and a little bit of a neutral roof on the floor. All feel very light and airy and open even though they’re not particularly big now.
If you do like color like this beautiful little bedroom with an extra day that they’ve chosen a feature element, like the day that and they’ve thrown that pop of dark tangerine.
Which is so fabulous on there, and what it does is it gets to act as the single focal point in the whole space, and that’s great; you can make a focal point out of something with just a color statement,
as they’ve done here, you want to throw a pillow on there for a little bit like an accent texture or pattern; keep it small as they did in this bedroom with this beautiful green pillow on this all whitespace.
So, that’s how do you deal with color in a small space, keep that palette open and neutral and expansive.
Tiny rugs are not suitable for small space
People think that you’re supposed to use small bucks in tiny spaces; it’s the opposite.
The bigger the run in a tiny space, the bigger your area will feel; I know it doesn’t make any sense, but look at this.
In this picture, with that bit of tiny rug below this coffee table. That is absurd.
All you do is see this space, and it makes the whole rest of the room look like a matchbox. Okay, let’s get real.
There are two ways to do big carpets in tiny spaces.
One, which is, you run it almost up against the wall, and the entire space has a lovely rug statement to it like this beautiful living room.
Or like this little office space, which I think is excellent with all green and white scrub on that. That’s fantastic.
The second pro designer tip on rugs in small spaces is to choose a carpet that has a total value, very close to your subfloor; it doesn’t matter if you’ve got wood or tile.
But if you choose a rug that is almost the same color. Overall, it doesn’t have to all be that. But overall, it has the floor.
All your lines disappear, and all of a sudden, your space just exploded.
Visually, look at this space now.
It’s not an exceptionally tiny space, but it’s a perfect example of a total rug sitting right on that wood floor that’s perfect, or even this other little room, which is much tighter.
Still, they’ve thrown a cute little brown cowhide down underneath these two swivel chairs, and that cowhide lays straight on top of that brown wood floor, and it looks like part of it, you don’t feel like that space is tiny or tight at all.
There are your pro tips with tiny rugs for small spaces.
