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When designing the interior of a small room, they mainly adhere to two tasks: rationally use every centimeter or even millimeter of the available area and make it beautiful and harmonious at the same time. To accomplish these tasks, there are many ready-made ideas that have been tested in thousands of rooms. They will be discussed.
General principles and ideas
Regardless of the purpose of a small room, there are general principles for their design. This is far from dogma, but adhering to these rules, it is easy to create a harmonious interior of a small room on your own, and not at the expense of functionality and convenience.
Styles for small spaces
The very first thing you need to decide is the style. It is much easier to develop a design, select finishing materials, furniture, accessories. Small-sized rooms should not be cluttered with objects; there should not be many accessories in them. The more free space remains, the more spacious the room seems. Because not all styles are suitable. The following will look good:
- modern;
- minimalism;
- hi-tech;
- Japanese or Chinese;
- Scandinavian.
Out-of-the-box vision is the key to unique design
All of them are characterized by smoothly painted walls, clear lines, a minimum of details. All this will play into the hands of a small room. Read more about almost all of these styles here.
The choice of color
It has long been known that light colors visually enlarge the premises. Light colors are not necessarily white, although white and its shades are used very often. They make the interior lighter and weightless, especially in combination with light floors and ceilings.
If you decide to make the walls colored, you need to remember the rule of three. With regard to color design, its essence is that in order to create a harmonious interior, three colors must be present. The first is basic, there can be a lot of it. Two additional can be in very small quantities. If we talk about design in small rooms, the walls are painted in the base color and they should be light. Furniture – either the base color (maybe a very close shade) or one of the additional ones. Accessories and textiles – complementary colors.
If you take a closer look at the photos that seem most attractive to you, you will find that there are three colors in them. It can look good and more saturated with different colors, but only a good designer can put everything together correctly.
But how to choose a trio of colors? There are tables of matching colors that designers use, but you can focus on your own taste or peep at the photo. The most attractive combination can be implemented in your room.
Ceiling decoration
Most often, the ceiling is made white. Not necessarily snow-white, some shades and tones are often used. What you should not do is paint the ceiling in a dark or bright color. This can only be used in a very high room with excellent lighting, and it is better that the ceiling is glossy. Dark colors make the room feel much lower. If you need to remove the “well effect” – this is a good way. In other cases, it is better not to experiment, although with the right lighting it may not be bad, but this also requires considerable design experience.
In rooms with low ceilings, there are several ways to visually make them look higher through the play of color and light. The first is to make the walls a tone lighter. At the same time, the boundary between the walls and the ceiling is lost, which is perceived by us as a higher room.
The second way is a glossy ceiling. The surface reflects the environment, which again deceives our eyesight. Of modern technologies, only stretch ceilings give such an effect, but the choice of shades and the degree of gloss and reflection is wide. Just be careful with gloss. It reflects everything. And what is on the cabinets too. Therefore, in such a room there should be perfect order.
The third is lighting around the perimeter or directed from the walls to the center. This option is usually implemented on two-level or multi-level ceilings. This stepping in itself also, as it were, lifts the ceiling up, and with the backlight effect it is further enhanced. When thinking about illuminated ceilings, do not create too complex structures for small rooms. They are good for spacious rooms, not for small rooms.
All these methods can be combined, which is often done. It’s important not to overdo it.
Floor decoration
The choice of color – light or dark – largely depends on the style, but there are those in which both options are acceptable. What then to choose? Focus on your own desires. If you want to get a sense of stability in the room, a dark floor is more suitable. If lightness is required – your choice is a light floor.
With the help of floor design, you can also achieve a visual increase in the room, however, a floor made of boards, laminate or parquet is suitable for this. Traditionally, they are laid parallel to the rays of light emanating from the window. To achieve the effect we need, it is necessary to lay the coating at an angle with respect to the front door. This breaks up the perspective and visually makes the room look bigger. Yes, this laying method is more difficult, and when using it, there is more waste – not all trimmings can be attached, but the effect is good.
Furniture
Small spaces require functional and comfortable furniture, while concise forms with clear lines look better. Styles are also pushing for such a choice – they all need strict, simple lines.
When planning, choose the environment so that the horizontal surfaces are at different levels. This makes the interior more dynamic. If you put everything on the same level, it will be too monotonous and flat.
Another recommendation – do not load too much space. In small rooms you need to put the necessary. It is advisable to avoid a large number of massive objects. If this suits your idea, put the furniture on metal legs. They seem to lift the object above the floor, creating interesting effects.
To increase functionality when using a small space allows furniture that changes its shape or purpose. It is also called “transformers”. Everyone knows the sofa bed, chair bed. They have been used for a long time, only the appearance changes and the mechanisms become more convenient. There is also a wardrobe bed (the bed rises and hides in the body) and a considerable number of similar things (a transforming sofa in the photo below).
The application of these rules is not mandatory, but it will allow you to develop a beautiful and harmonious design of a small room.
Repair of a small apartment (photo report) is described here.
Interior ideas for small rooms for different purposes
Now let’s specifically see how all of the above is implemented in the design of premises for various purposes. It is clear that there is a significant difference between the design of the living room, nursery and bedroom.
The only room in the apartment
In a one-room apartment, the room should be super-functional. After all, it is used both as a living room and as a bedroom. First of all, you should think about the sleeping place. There are several solutions. The most obvious and common is to put a folding sofa. There are different designs, but the essence of this does not change. The only drawback of this solution is, after all, it is not a bed and sleeping on the sofa is not entirely comfortable. However, this is the most common option.
This option is acceptable if one person lives in an apartment. If there are two people, this is no longer very convenient: someone wants to sleep, someone else can’t sleep. In this case, they try to fence off part of the room with a translucent partition and place a bed behind it. The rest is furnished as a mini-living room.
The partition can be made from any material. The only condition: if it encloses the area near the window, it must let in enough light. In the photo above, the room is divided by a translucent glass wall. With an explicit separation, space is not fragmented. It remains whole. Another option is to designate the area with a plasterboard openwork partition or make a partition in the form of shelves.
If you still want more privacy, there is an option with sliding partitions that work like doors in wardrobes.
Read about sliding doors here, and in this article you can read about accordion and book folding doors.
They can move apart in different directions (photo on the right) or fold to one of the sides. If such a partition is made mirrored, it will also visually expand the space.
There are also non-standard options for installing a bed in a single living room. For example, if the ceilings allow, you can move the bed to the ceiling. To do this, they build a solid structure in the form of a closet or podium, and make a bed on the “roof”.
There is another option with that de podium. Make a working or living area on it, and hide a pull-out bed under the flooring. It is difficult to imagine a more rational use of space.
You can also play with the design of the bed. They can fall from the ceiling, be disguised as a closet. Such beds are already on sale and are called “bed-wardrobe”.
In general, there are enough solutions. The interior of a small room in a one-room apartment can be both beautiful and functional.
small bedroom
Even if you do not have a studio apartment, a small bedroom is far from uncommon. For many, its area does not exceed 10 sq.m. In this case, only the necessary items are left from the situation. Mandatory bed, bedside tables. Everything else – if the interior of a small room is not very overloaded.
Without a closet in the bedroom it is very inconvenient, but a massive item takes up too much space. It can be replaced by a closet or dressing room. In fact, they differ in size and content. The dressing room must be at least 1,2 m deep (so that you can enter). In long and narrow bedrooms with an entrance door on the short side, you can fence off a place right at the entrance. This makes the room more regular in shape – closer to the square, and such rooms are perceived as more spacious.
If the entrance to the bedroom is on a long wall, one of the corners or also the end wall can be taken under the dressing room. It all depends on the specific layout. If there is the slightest possibility, allocate such a place. You will simply be amazed at how many things, with the right organization, can fit in there.
One of the more traditional options is to fill the wall opposite the bed with furniture. But it will have to be made to order – in the entire wall. So the bedroom will have a modern look. The design style of this “wall” is chosen based on the general style.
Another idea for arranging a small bedroom is to build the head of the bed into the furniture wall. From the point of view of Feng Shui, this is wrong, but from the point of view of rationality, it is an excellent option.
It is difficult to come up with anything else in such a narrowly specialized room. The main task is to correctly place the bed and choose the right color scheme.
children’s room
The concept of “children’s room” is quite extensible. This is a room for children of preschool and school age, up to teenagers. As you understand, the design and content are significantly different, but the ideas are similar.
The main way to save space is to make a bunk bed. In this case, there can be one sleeping place – upstairs, and a workplace is equipped on the “first floor”. This is the option that suits both toddlers and older children. The sizes of the beds are also not very different: children grow too fast, so they generally buy teenage beds right away, adding a “childish” entourage with bedspreads, pictures and other accessories.
If you are afraid of heights, you can make another type of bed – with a pull-out second bed. Also a good option.
If you don’t need a second bed, drawers for toys or things can be made under the bed. In the interior of a small room, everything is subordinated to the task of optimally using the entire available area, while freeing up as much free space as possible.
For older children, they use almost the same techniques, only in a different design.
When designing the interior of a small children’s room, use the above rules: three colors, multi-level surfaces, no unnecessary details.
The general principles for decorating children’s rooms are described in this article.
Small square living room
No matter how much you would like to stick wallpaper with a large pattern in a small living room, you should not do this. Except perhaps in fragments or on one wall, using the principles of combining wallpaper of two types, otherwise they will “eat up” the space and the “box” effect will appear. You will feel almost on the physical plane how the walls are pressing on you. The best choice is plain walls in pastel colors.
Here the invoice can be different. It can be decorative textured plaster, wallpaper with an embossed pattern or fiberglass with a texture for painting. It is very fashionable now to finish one of the walls with wood or stone (stone-like tiles or flagstone). All these are ways to diversify a not too large set of furniture that is usually present in a small living room. Most often it is a sofa, two armchairs, a coffee table and a TV. It doesn’t seem like a very large set, but there are many variations. Firstly, furniture comes in different shapes, styles and colors. And the number of combinations is very large. Some of them are in the photo gallery.
The design of living rooms is discussed in detail here, and you can also read about the choice of wallpaper for the living room and about the features and types of curtains for this room.