Maximizing Small Spaces

Search for small space design and you will get four hundred photographs of a bed that folds into a wall. Transforming furniture has its place, but it is the last move, not the first. The decisions that actually make a small home feel large are made in the plan and the section, before anything is built.

Never drop the ceiling

A high-cube container gives you 9 ft 6 in of external height. After the floor build-up and the insulation you can hold a clear 8 ft 6 in, which is taller than most modern houses. The temptation, always, is to drop a ceiling to hide ducting and lighting. Do not do it.

In a room that is 8 ft wide, the ceiling is the only dimension you have any generosity in, and volume is what stops a small room feeling like a corridor. We run services in a floor plenum or a shallow bulkhead over the service band only, and leave the ceiling at full height everywhere you actually stand.

Put the wet things in one band

Kitchen, bathroom, plant and laundry all want the same drain and the same supply. Group them into a single service band across the middle of the plan and two things happen. The plumbing gets short and cheap. And both ends of the container are left clear, which means the longest sightline in the house runs corner to corner past the service band rather than stopping at a wall six feet from the door.

This is the entire idea behind our Shelf 40. It is one 40 ft box with the wet core in the middle, and it reads as two generous rooms rather than one long one.

Sightlines beat square footage

The perceived size of a room is set by the longest distance your eye can travel, not by the floor area. A 160 sq ft room with a clear diagonal to a corner window feels bigger than a 220 sq ft room chopped by a partition at the halfway point. So:

• Glaze the corners, not the middle of walls. A corner window has no visual stop at the edge of the frame, so the room appears to continue outside.
• Put the longest sightline on the diagonal, which in a 20 ft container is about 21 ft rather than 20 ft or 8 ft.
• Where you need a partition, make it stop short of the ceiling or slide away entirely. Our Shelf 40 uses a sliding steel partition for the sleeping end so the volume is only divided when somebody is asleep in it.

Storage belongs in the thickness of things

Freestanding storage eats floor area. Storage built into an element you already needed does not. The stair up to a sleeping platform is 30 in deep whether or not it has drawers in it. The bench under the window has to be something. The wall between the bathroom and the living space has to be at least 6 in thick to take the drainage, so make it 12 in and put shelves on the dry side.

The rule is simple: before you add a piece of storage, look for something structural or circulatory that is already occupying that volume, and hollow that out instead.

One material, used everywhere

Small rooms are ruined by material changes. Every junction between two finishes is a visual stop, and a room with eight of them feels like eight small zones. We line most units in a single birch ply throughout, floor to wall to joinery, and leave the original corrugated steel exposed on one wall as the only contrast in the room. Two materials. That is the whole palette, and it is why the rooms photograph larger than they measure.

The things worth spending money on

If the budget is tight, spend it in this order: glazing, ceiling height, joinery. Skimp in this order: appliance brand, floor finish, fixtures. A cheap tap in a room with a good window is a fine place to live. An expensive tap in a room with a small high window is not.