Furnishing a small house: it takes rationality and a lot of creativity
Furnishing a small house is always a great challenge. You have to deal with all the limits of the environment and maximize the potential of the home. You have to dose lights and colors and do everything to increase the perception of space with small tricks. As you will see there are some secrets that you will have to use, then you will be free to choose and create your own style. By the way, what do you like about furniture?
Furnishing a small house well: a difficult but rewarding job
Today it is fashionable to live in small houses, but we must also avoid inconvenience and take care of the design, otherwise the quality of life suffers. To achieve this, you have to give the best of yourself, putting your intelligence and creativity into it. Of course, arranging furniture suitable for limited spaces is quite complicated, but it will be precisely this difficulty that will give you new ideas, stimulate your practical sense and your inventiveness, in order to achieve gratifying results. It's not really a walk in the park, but you have to learn to mix creativity and rationality, aesthetic sense and practicality, with a pinch of originality and a lot of satisfying personalization. It will take commitment and a little talent to optimize all spaces, even the seemingly insignificant ones, and in any case it will be fun and satisfying to seek original solutions, decorative and functional elements together, characterizing every part of the house according to your taste and needs. The important thing is to be able to furnish it in an elegant but at the same time functional way with furniture that does not go out of fashion at the speed of light. A personal and original style will never be out of fashion, because it is not standardized and taken for granted.
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If the house is a little house, you need talent, elbow grease and brains
Today, many prefer to live in small houses, given the costs of sales and rents and also the time it takes to do housework, especially if you have a busy job. Even those who live in "another city not permanently, for professional or study reasons, tend to organize themselves in small apartments. Those who live alone (or even some young couple) opt for a" house close to their workplace, even if more small, to avoid having to deal with city traffic especially during rush hours.When the houses are small, it is often thought that it is not the case to resort to an architect or an interior decorator, but, instead, just when there are problems that are too difficult to solve by yourself, competent help and a detailed project can answer the your needs.
Space-saving remedies for small-sized houses
Small houses struggle with various types of problems. There is no place for more people, there are no support surfaces suitable for the needs or perhaps a relaxation area after dinner with TV or music system; there is not enough space for storing linen, clothes or plants or for a large pantry. To tackle the problem of space, the first advice is to tear down some partitions (not load-bearing walls of course), otherwise the renovation costs go up to stars) and replace them with dividers that can also be wardrobes, bookcases, hangers or in any case equipped walls that separate the rooms. You can also tear down a wall of a corridor and create an "almost independent" sleeping area with wooden panels instead of the partition . If you have friends and you want to invite them to dinner, think about a folding table or a nice and tiny space-saving console, which can turn into a floor of three meters or more. Even if you don't have a small house, a console table like this is always the case. a convenience, especially for a party or a particular event. The sofa bed is used in a home: it can be used closed as a single-seater or opened for two. The bed can also be folded down wall mounted inside a cabinet-cupboard, so as not to take away space from the environment. The important thing is that it is practical to open and does not become your nightmare due to its lack of functionality. Comfort must be put first and should never be sacrificed to aesthetics, otherwise you only get stress and fatigue.
The sleeping area always requires a little more care and a more chic, refined and a little romantic touch. With a foldaway bed you can gain several square meters in the sleeping area, but there are also other innovations that can excite you more, if you find this solution not very comfortable especially for your back. A lot of folding beds are used in a small loft area that can be used for a few guests. And also some original model of sofa bed that can be pulled out very easily. Don't buy a bed that is too large; he thinks above all of choosing bed bases with high quality slats and mattresses, branded pillows and silk pillowcases, hypoallergenic and anti-wrinkle. Choose a bed with storage under the mattress, for blankets and kitchens or duvets, a real must have for small homes. In cottages by the sea or in the mountains, opt for closed wardrobes with curtains, a convenient, space-saving and slightly frivolous solution. A wardrobe can serve to separate two areas of the bedroom, acting as a wall. The room can also be separated from another room thanks to curtains of various colors. The partition wall can also be opaque glass for a minimum of privacy and without a door.
Custom and multifunctional furniture and mezzanines
The furnishings should always be made to measure and multifunctional, exposed shelves without doors, tables and drawers with wheels, making the most of the structure of the house. If the furniture is made to measure, it can also be in the color of the walls, because in this way they enlarge the environment as well as allowing you to use every space and corner of the compartments at your disposal. The cost, if made by a craftsman will be higher, but the space will be doubled and in any case you can also find ready-made ones with the measures you need on the guaranteed online sites. The corners can be used for practical and spacious wall units or refined corner cabinets. All the furnishings in a small house must always have a double functionality. A bench must not only serve as a seat, but must be a chest, to store bed and bath linens, pillows and runners. A table, both in the kitchen and in the living area, must not only serve as a dining table or support base for furnishing objects, but must have a double function and will have it if it also contains capacious drawers for tablecloths, placemats. for breakfast, coasters and tableware.
Even the staircase leading to a mezzanine can be a fantastic and invisible extra space as a container even on sight if it is used to accommodate aesthetically valid furnishings or retractable, if you want to use it for cleaning tools, such as brooms and floor brushes. If you have left a larger house for a smaller one and do not want to give up many small and large useful or useless objects, you must focus on a storage loft, especially if you do not have a garage or a cellar. A wooden mezzanine to gain another small environment, if you have some bigger renovation work in mind, or even one that is not habitable, but intended for storage of luggage or boxes with souvenirs, Christmas objects and more, will make your home look like more spacious and harmonious at the same time. A solution especially suitable for a holiday home, by the sea or in the mountains, in a rustic style. If you do not want to lower the ceiling too much, you can build more than one, always not high, which can be accessed through small doors, thanks to a retractable metal staircase or exposed worked wood, to store gym, sea or mountain equipment, plasticized boxes. for the change of season, packaged food reserves, Usually the plasterboard is used to make them.
Doors, glass, walls, kitchen and bathrooms
The doors must be sliding, as well as the glass without closing doors in order to obtain spaces that could hardly be used. Multifunctional furniture and revolving walls can be a modern and pleasantly attractive idea in small spaces. The revolving walls are an ideal solution to have at hand, for example, on the one hand a shelf for paper documents and on the other a folding top for a PC or a library, a DVD collection, by operating a simple mechanism. They are nice and functional ideas for furniture that does not diminish your living spaces, such as mirrored walls that give light and hide the wardrobes or curtains and screens that divide the rooms. It is advisable to position the furnishings based on exposure to the sun, to give brightness to the rooms. The important thing is not to neglect any detail to creatively make your small home more spacious and sunny.
By replacing the doors of the common rooms with vaulted arches, space is saved and the rooms are illuminated; if a room is less lit, glass and wood panels can be used to separate it from the others and give it more light. Bridge furniture can also be useful as mezzanines. Do not immediately think about painting the walls white, just because it is a color that widens the spaces. You can choose different colors for the various environments, obviously always clear, warm and sunny, so that the effect is more welcoming. Replace the bulky chandeliers with led lights on the ceiling, spotlights and neon and put various light points in the rooms. the space is limited, the more the mind works and expresses all its inventiveness, experimenting with new arrangements of furniture, innovative separations of environments and the use of corners ignored at first sight.
A rule that some do not like, but which is still necessary to do a good job is to start eliminating what is really not needed in the house or that does not work properly. If you buy new furniture, always get rid of something old and useless. Also remember that if you create suitable storage spaces, you will always know where to put and above all where to find your things. Use every part of the house, but without overloading it, do not use too heavy and bulky curtains and focus on open spaces. In the kitchen, he uses the corners for a trolley, for a small waste container, creates an island kitchen with plate and sink, buys custom-made appliances, small and usable without difficulty in maneuvering. There are modern kitchens that have pull-out shelves to increase support and work space, snack counters and folding tables and chairs. For the pantry problem, create wall units with sliding or visible doors for food and bottle jars, as well as use the containers created in the storage lofts for the bulkier supplies. If possible, get a mini bathroom, equipped only with toilet and sink, in addition to the bathroom with shower and sink without column on the floor, equipped with a hanging cabinet attached to the mirror for daily personal cleaning and make-up, all divided into containers suitable for keep everything in order.
Help! I miss the space!
Greatness in a home isn't everything; there are often rooms that are disproportionate and not exploited in the best way even in apartments that are spacious enough, not optimized and furnished a little at random. In fact, creativity and commitment are not always enough to solve all the furnishing problems of a small house with satisfactory solutions. If you find yourself in difficulty, do not hesitate to ask for help from an expert interior designer, who will propose you a project based on the functionality, practicality and aesthetics you want to achieve with a cost estimate. If you live in a small house, think about these tips. You don't have to buy large furniture. Choose essential furnishings, in light colors and do not put them all against the walls. Do not place the wardrobes in the corridors: they could make it difficult to pass through and obscure the rooms. Organize the linen in transparent boxes inside the wardrobe to facilitate the search for items. Divide the rooms in two with equipped walls and two-sided bookcases, also useful for separating the bedroom from a living area. If you need more shelves, use shelves of various sizes at different heights. Avoid dark colors on the walls and ceiling so as not to take away the light from the rooms. Even with the mirrors you can expand the space and give brightness to the rooms. Do not mix too many styles of furniture, given the small size that would not allow adequate spacing. A unique style gives the feeling of larger spaces. Do not use chandeliers and floor lamps, but mainly use spotlights. Don't buy a bed that's too big. Replace bedside tables with shelves. For the bathroom, opt for a circular or rectangular shower tray; choose a sink that does not rest on the floor to create space for a hygienic bin or something else. Buy a wall-mounted radiator, narrow and vertically, on which you can also heat your towel and bathrobe. In the kitchen, use folding chairs to hang on the wall with hooks if they are not in use.
