In the Home: Styling a Small Space

We all have them in our home, those smaller rooms or nooks and corners that need just as much love as the bigger spaces in our home. Whether you’re starting anew or revamping an already decorated space, I’m going to share a few ideas on how to style the smaller spaces in your home for a bigger than life look!

Honestly, those smaller spaces are so much more fun to work with because they are the places where you can get creative and perhaps go a bit outside of your own comfort zone. I have two rooms in my home that are no bigger than 5 feet by 5 feet, and ironically, they’re the two rooms that we use on a daily basis. I wanted them to be fun yet functional, pretty but not too feminine, and a space that would almost disguise the fact that its square footage is less than boastful.

The first room is our downstairs powder room. I really packed a punch into this space! I chose a wallpaper with a bold print in a dark color which could seemingly be too much for such a small space, but it really works so well! And from there, I picked out the rest of the pieces to match with its vibe… golds, rose golds and pinks, ornate pieces like the sconces and the faucet, and an overall ostentatious yet traditional design.

My design tips:

Think about the design you want… or just what you want the feel to be. Traditional? Tranquil? Loud and bright? Bohemian? Choose any one description and then get some inspiration! Go on Instagram or Pinterest and see what one thing strikes your fancy… one thing… don’t just copy the entire design. Perhaps it’s a wallpaper, perhaps it’s a detail like a faucet or a shelf or even just a color that you love. Once you grab on to that, then start picking pieces to go with it… browse online or check out your local home stores for inspiration.

Here are two lighting fixtures I spent days and days picking out just to match the wallpaper ever so perfectly. And I get it, you just want it done… but if you can, take your time, find the right piece for the room… it’s like a fun scavenger hunt… and you’ll be so much more happier when it’s all done, because you know that each piece is juuuuust right!

Don’t forget to look down! Just because it’s just the floor, doesn’t mean it’s just the floor! In fact, it’s another canvas on which you can draw on. Make the floor an interesting part of your design. If you’re starting from scratch in your renovation, take the time to find a fun tile that will compliment the rest of the design. If you already have flooring, then think about perhaps adding a little rug to the space, or incorporating an organizational unit to clean up the floor a bit… like in the next set of photos of my mud room.

And don’t forget about what I always say, it’s all about the little details! If it’s a towel ring, then go all out! If it’s a hook or a door knob, a shelf or a lighting fixture… think through every single little detail because those are the things that will really make the space pop!

Here is our teeny-tiny mud room. We didn’t do much to this space during our renovation because there wasn’t must that we could have done without tearing down even more walls, which we didn’t want to get into. So this is the space I had to work with. I painted the inside of it a light gray, put in a beautiful gray tile, and installed a really pretty light fixture. After the renovation was over, I needed to figure out a way to make the space functional. Since we have a lot of shoes, I needed to find a way to contain them all, but wanted a more sleek way of storing them. My husband installed these two white cupboards that we bought at IKEA… one on top for hats and gloves, and the bottom one as a seat, but also the door pulls out to store shoes. Form and function at its finest!

And during the summer months, I take all the coats off the hooks and put them in storage… I love when the mud room is almost completely empty. And because I have an obscene collection of summer hats, I’ve been hanging them in this space ever since we finished the renovation as a fun way to fill up the empty space...and because they’re easy to grab on the way out the door!

My design tips:

If you have a space that you only really use in certain seasons, then don’t forget about them during the other times of the year. Use them as a blank canvas to display photos or things you love, like I did with my hats. Perhaps it can be a space to show off your shell collection and therefore you can arrange your shells in a pretty vignette, or it can be a temporary little library and tea room where you can display your favorite books and sit and drink tea or lemonade with friends. The key is, no matter how wild the idea may seem, it’s just a different way of using the space you have in a fun way.

I’ve always loved these hooks from Restoration Hardware… With all the other lucite details in my home, and to match the clear glass doorknob in this particular room, which is original to this 1950’s home, I had to match these as well. Similar ones linked here.

Function: Hats, kids’ bug catchers, my gardening tools and a few sandals… clean, simple and easy to style once the summer months arrive! Oh, and I leave my kids’ rock collection on the ledge all year round to remind me of summer.

Find a space in your home that you’ve never quite had a way of utilizing and think about it in a different way. Or if you’re starting a renovation and have a tiny room, whether a powder room or even a closet, let your imagination run wild or employ the services of good ol’ Pinterest to guide your way, and find an interesting yet functional design for that space. Think about function, think about how you want that space to feel and think outside the box…. even if it is only 5x5.

Happy designing!

xxAlisa