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Our houses are getting smaller just when we’re all spending more time in them, and living with housemates more than ever due to skyrocketing costs, which have been rising faster than incomes for more than two decades. As we’re increasingly pushed to use rooms in multiple ways, you really feel this space crunch in the bedrooms. Since an extra bedroom can translate to as much as 15% more in resale value, there’s motivation to list even the tiniest spaces (the minimum square footage for a bedroom is considered to be about 70 square feet, which is pretty small, but folks will call any old closet with a window a bedroom).
If you’ve got one of those tiny bedrooms that make you claustrophobic, you can try to maximize the space to make it feel bigger. But you also have to address the room’s functionality: A bedroom that is all bed and no room isn’t very usable or comfortable. But you can make even the tiniest bedroom into a functional space with a little planning. Here are a few things to consider.
The first thing to consider is the size of your furniture. Unless you’re absolutely stuck with the stuff you already own, buying appropriately sized furniture for the space is the first step toward making it work as a space:
Beds: Start with the size of the room. A bedroom that’s 7 feet by 10 feet is destined for a twin bed. If you’ve got 100 square feet or so to work with, you can upgrade to a full. Larger bed sizes are probably not going into a tiny bedroom: If you want a queen bed, you’ll need a little more room—a room that's 10 feet by 11 feet or so will work. And for a king or California king, you’ll need at least 144 square feet (a room that's 12 feet by 12 feet).
Other furniture: For other furniture, you can look for “apartment sized” or “small space” pieces that are designed to be used in cramped quarters. A small dresser that poses storage challenges but lets you walk around the room is better than a full-sized piece that forces you to crabwalk around your bedroom.
Once you have your furniture picked out for the room, the next step is to think about layout. In a tiny bedroom, you’ll want to leverage the existing features of the room:
Bed placement. Generally speaking, larger beds (queens and kings) should be placed in the middle of the room with the headboard against a wall, granting access to both sides of the large mattress (unless you like the idea of climbing over someone every time you have to go to the bathroom), while fulls and twins should be tucked into corners in a small space. Choose bed placement based on the specifics of your room and lifestyle, however. If there’s only one occupant of the bed, that king can be shoved into a corner without penalty.
Create pathways. In a tiny room, any layout that will allow you to walk freely through the space is the right one. Put the bed against the window, push it up against one wall, float it in the middle of the room—whatever opens up a reasonable pathway to get from the door to everything you need (the closet, the bed, the dresser, etc.) is the right way to go.
Leverage existing features. Consider what the room already offers. For example, if the window has a large sill, consider putting the bed sideways against the window and using the sill as an ersatz nightstand, eliminating the need for an extra piece of furniture. You can even expand the sill with a piece of shelving to deepen it and make it more useful. Or, if the tiny bedroom has a surprisingly large closet, you could consider turning it into a bed nook, pushing the bed into the closet and opening up the rest of the floor space—in fact, you can put dressers in the closet, too, or create a casual “cloffice” by pushing the desk in there.
Multi-purpose furniture. Eliminate extra pieces by making what you have do double duty. If you want a desk in your bedroom, placing it on the side of the bed can let it also function as a nightstand, for example. And if you’re going with a small bed anyway, switching to a daybed can let it double as a seating area during the day.
Storage is a problem in a tiny space, even if it’s a legal bedroom with a closet. If you’re able to buy specific furniture for the space, choose stuff that has built-in storage to conserve floor space and keep pathways open:
Captain’s Bed. The bed is a prime opportunity here—you might think of a Captain’s Bed as a kid’s bed, but having drawers built into the bed itself can allow you to skip the dresser entirely. Add a bookcase headboard and your bed can provide all the storage you need without eating up an additional inch of floor.
Murphy Bed. You can also consider storing the bed itself, by installing a Murphy Bed (or alternative) that keeps the floor free unless you’re actively using it.
If there’s a theme to making a tiny bedroom functional, it’s “maximize floor space.” Keeping stuff off the floors will let you move easily around the room and make it feel bigger. There are a lot of ways to keep stuff off the floor:
Shelving
Sconces or hanging lamps
Hanging as much as you can on the wall allows you to have all the functionality without crowding the space or making it impossible to navigate.
One powerful way to make even the tiniest bedroom usable is to install a lofted bed. This allows you to keep the floor open for other uses, whether that’s a home office, a sitting area, or clothing storage. You can find loft beds as small as twin size, so as long as you have the ceiling height to make this work comfortably.
If the bedroom has a closet or an en-suite bathroom, consider removing the doors or replacing them with pocket doors or barn doors. Traditional and bifold doors require floor space to swing through, which limits your furniture layout options and creates dead space you can’t use for any other purpose. Removing or replacing them can reclaim a few square feet of space for furniture, storage, or to create a usable pathway.
