Captain Shelf

Small apartments offer a cozy living space to anyone who can make the best use of a limited number of square feet. Learning how to maximize your space – and just as important, the illusion of space, is the trick to making a smaller living space feel open and inviting instead of cramped and small.

While you should keep in mind the obvious aspects of small space living – such as buying compact furniture that doesn’t take up a large amount of floor space – making use of the space goes far beyond this.

One rarely discussed aspect is the use of colors in relation to how we orient space. Did you know that an apartment that is designed with a single color in mind – meaning the furniture, carpets, drapes, and walls are coordinated to use different shades of 1 color – will appear larger than an apartment that has areas segregated by different colors? This seems a bit counter intuitive, as you’d think that maybe by painting the corner of a room a different color and placing your desk there it would seem to create a smaller room within a room. But instead what happens is the eye sees this as two different things cramped together in one single space. Conversely, when the entire apartment takes on the hue of a single color, it appears to the eye as a larger, more open space!

Decorating with items that are transparent or reflective is a fun way to create the perception of depth and space where there is none. This includes not just mirrors but glass coffee tables and reflective surfaces on end tables, lamps, etc. Another way these elements encourage a feeling of spaciousness is that they reflect light and create a brighter living environment.

Storage space in a smaller apartment is almost always lacking and one result of this is that the place can feel cluttered. When you don’t have the proper closet space and shelving space needed for things, it ends up somewhere else – which means the floor or being crammed up underneath the bed or bottom of the closet. An easy way to counter this is to use stand alone storage such as a tall, vertical wardrobe closet or better yet, a mirrored wardrobe. Keep in mind that you can use a wardrobe for more than just clothes and so they become an ideal storage area for the bedroom when placed in a corner.

Finally, an often under utilized but clever way to add some storage space is through using the space under the bed. I’m not talking about throwing things under the bed, but buying something specifically made for under the bed storage. The ideal solution is what’s known as a platform bed. These cleverly designed beds come with built in storage and just as important as the storage itself, the drawers and shelves of a platform bed are accessible and not hard to get into!