Small considerations go a long way in creating space, such as installing a sliding or pocket door that doesn't open into a room.' Ruth's final piece of advice on the structure of a room is to 'keep the woodwork the same colour as walls to dissolve the boundaries of the space.'Īs for furniture, Ruth's words of wisdom extend to folding furniture and perhaps more surprisingly, antiques. 'Try walls that can be moved in various different ways - curtain off areas, look at partitions that slide open and close between rooms and bifold doors that open out so can have one or two rooms. 'Whenever you’re dividing up between different rooms, don’t interrupt the sightline from room to room - critall windows or glass doors will help both spaces feel a bit more large,' says Ruth. 'For example, a small bathroom has far less space to decorate so you can afford to tile all the way up to the ceiling and it will look great.' 'One great thing is that you can fill a room with a single idea done confidently,' according to Ruth. Once you land on something that works for your small room, then go into the styling. 'You have to solve the issue first and then apply your taste when you have the solution you need,' continues Ruth, who suggests building a bank of references about how to work with a chimney breast or bay window in a small space, for example, and rather than discounting something for its style, instead look past that at the tricks used to maximise space. MAY WE SUGGEST: Design ideas for built-in furniture It's not something you immediately think of, so you need to take time to look at all those possibilities.' That way, the corner unit is used but in an effective way, so there is no dead space. A good example is a small Paris flat by Marianne Evennou, who installed a washing machine into a corner cupboard in the kitchen, but the door is in the hallway. See things not as they look at first but in raw volumes and where you can access things from – look beyond it as it is now and be ambitious about what’s possible and where you might be able to add storage or make what you have more practical. 'It's something Beata Heuman does so well, building little shelves on top of radiators, or you can consider the inside walls of a window or the inside edge of a dividing wall and sides of a chimney breast and see if there’s something you can use them for, like a little shelf all the way up the chimney breast, a shelf and cupboard underneath a windowsill, or little shelves along the inside edge of a thick wall. 'Look at all the different surfaces in the room and think about using spaces that you don’t often notice,' says Ruth. Instead, consider, for example, a wall-mounted basin and towel rail and bedside tables that are built into a headboard. In compact bathrooms and bedrooms in particular, Ruth's advice is to keep as much off the floor as possible as a clear floor creates the idea of space. You may lose a few centimetres of floor space to create a panel behind a built-in bed but you gain space when you’re using it and have a bedside table built in, rather than one taking up floor space'. With this kind of approach – of which there are many stylish examples in the gallery below – Ruth advises you have to 'lose space to gain space. MAY WE SUGGEST: Christmas decoration ideas For example, make a dining nook with banquette seating (with storage underneath) that goes the width of a room, or build a box bed into the length of the room, making space for niches and cupboards.' You might think this would cause the room to feel smaller, but as everything will then have a set place, it achieves the opposite effect and keeps it organised at the same time. Instead, think about using built-in furniture to fit everything in properly. 'Furniture floats more in a small room, because any gap between it and the wall is awkward and small. 'Eliminate awkward gaps with purposeful joinery,' she advises as a first step. Luckily, our Decoration Editor Ruth Sleightholme is full of knowledge for small room ideas, having worked on spaces of all shapes and sizes over her career to date. Granted, a small room does require more thought in the decoration than bigger rooms tend to and finding the right solution for the space can take a little know-how and a lot of research to find that you may not have considered before. There is something about small room ideas that tends to send people into a panic.
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