"Good things come in small packages", goes the saying. The idea that the some of the most exciting things can be concealed within a bijoux exterior is certainly true of interiors. Indeed, if you study House & Garden for long enough, you will discover that interior designers are often at their most creative and daring when it comes to decorating small spaces. One such designer, Rita Konig, urges us to “give rooms like this thought. The inclination is to ignore them, shove leftover bits of furniture in there and wonder why they are not that nice. The good thing about going to town in a small room is that you need less of everything.”
A downstairs loo, a tiny box bedroom or a narrow hallway are all opportunities to have fun and find inventive ways to make the most of the space. Though the temptation can be to fill it with miniature furniture and small accessories, so as not to overcrowd the space, this can actually have the opposite effect. “It's all about deceiving the eye,” says Alidad. “Putting something that's a bit larger than usual into a small room fools you into thinking that the space is bigger than it is”. This can apply to various elements of a room: architectural mouldings, furniture, art, lighting, rugs and more. “It's something everyone gets wrong all the time,” continues Alidad. “I'm always presenting ideas to clients and they worry that things will be too big, but when they see it in situ it just works.”
Another common misconception is that colour and pattern might make a small space feel crowded. Like Alidad's ‘large furniture’ trick, eye-catching motifs and bright hues can create the illusion of space, particularly when layered upon each other. The aim is to make the room inviting, and as Brandon Schubert says, ‘the more layers you can squeeze into a small space, the more inviting it will be'.
It takes some bravery, but often the result is bold, striking design of the type that might be too much if the space were any larger. If you are struggling to decide what to do with your tiny spaces, look no further than the below examples which prove that though the square footage may be limited, the decorative opportunities are endless. And here, more is more.
Small but mighty, this bedroom designed by Veere Grenney is an excellent argument for going as opulent as possible to make the space feel deliberate. Veere was inspired by Napoleon's campaign tent schemes, upholstering the walls and tented ceiling in Montauk Stripe, by Le Gracieux from Tissus d’Helene. A stripe is a brilliant and tactical choice for a space like this, as it will draw the eye upwards and create the illusion of more space – a well established trick used by many of the best designers.
The fabric is continued onto the curtains, which are discreetly tucked behind the border of the tented ceiling. It contributes to the overall cocooning effect of the space.
Before you begin the decoration of your small space it would be a good idea to familiarise yourself with the various paint tricks at your disposal, particularly those which lend themselves to pokey rooms. In the bedroom of his Parisian flat, Fabrizio Casiraghi has ingeniously lacquered the walls in an olive green colour, which lends a mirror-like effect to them. A similar look could easily be recreated using high-gloss paint, you just need to make sure that your walls are perfectly smooth and prepped beforehand in order to emulate the look of a glassy, watery surface, which ample depth behind it. Don't be afraid of a bold colour here either – as Fabrizio demonstrates, the richer and deeper the colour the more impact the gloss will have.
The above kitchen designed by Carlos Garcia is a masterclass in layering bold prints, and a brilliant example of the added impact they can have when layered in a small space. The longer you look at it, the more details reveal themselves. Take the wallpaper for example, a loud and playful William Morris print ('Blackthorn' in autumn), which dictates the palette for the rest of the space. The hints of rusty-red in the motif are picked up in the painted legs of the table (Fenwick & Tilbrook’s ‘Can-Can’) and the ‘Rise and Fall’ pendant from Broughtons of Leicester hanging above it, while the electric blue is mirrored in shelving throughout the kitchen, which is painted in Paper & Paint Library’s ‘Bluebird’.
There are myriad lessons to be learned from the decoration of the downstairs loo in Rita Konig's London house, but the main takeaway is that you mustn't be afraid to go bold, and certainly don't shy away from filling the space either. As you can see here, art, furniture and accessories climb their way up the walls, but far from feeling overcrowded, the tiny room feels abundant with interesting objects, each subtley providing a distraction from the room's meagre proportions. On the walls is ‘Antoinette Poisson’s scrolling, floral ‘Torrent – PP Rouleau’ wallcovering, and Rita even had the ventilation fan papered – ‘I had a brilliant wallpaperer and you can barely spot it now,’ she explains. More ingenious ideas can be gleaned from the ceiling, whose colours pick up on those in the wallpaper, though in gloss paint, there is a glass-like quality to it that extends the height of the room.
In small spaces, every nook and cranny can serve a purpose, and here, a cabinet installed into a nook above the loo simultaneously adds character while also providing valuable storage, without occupying precious floor space or jutting out into the room. As a whole, it is a brilliantly wonderful space that elicits many wonder-filled reactions, none of which have anything to do with it being small.
