Ideas for Small Spaces & Apartments

Most writing on tiny houses focuses a great deal on how small and cute they are, without spending much time examining what it's really like to live in one.

The options are endless.

Living in a little apartment can have its own special joys, but small closets aren't one of them.

The possibilities are endless when it comes to sprucing up your space.

If you've ever been a renter, and you have more than two pairs of shoes, this one's for you.

There’s small and then there is narrow. And narrow bedrooms can make you feel like you’re lying prone in a casket, and buried deep, deep underground. Learn all the tricks to make yourself believe that the space is actually as wide open as a prairie. Avoid horizontal stripes which emphasize the narrow width of the room, and use vertical ones instead. This room designed by Veere Grenney draws your eye up to the ceiling, making it look more expansive.

Even if you have plenty of space.

When you live life in only a few hundred square feet, a home must become a very fluid thing. Tiny apartments actually exist in four dimensions, and without capturing “time,” it’s impossible to truly reveal what it’s like to live small. Thankfully for all of us, the internet has adopted GIFs as a form of animated photo currency, and we can all see how real people make small homes work.

So, you just found that vintage apartment of your dreams: perfect millwork, cute tile, and a nifty fireplace. But the downside is that there’s no storage, just one tiny closet and nowhere to put all the stuff that you’re sure you’ll need. Don’t despair! Here are some renter-friendly solutions to work around that storage shortage. If you don’t have much storage space, you can take some tips from Tamar’s tiny kitchen.

Project by: Chelsea and Cate of StyleMutt Home Location: Washington D.C. This small apartment is professionally designed, and within its stylish walls and calming decor, we spotted eight smart style choices that really make this small space sing. Read ahead to read words from the designers and our picks for eight ideas you might want to steal for your own home.

Well, we just posted our last entry for Small Cool 2015, which means now is the time to peruse the whole field of entries in each of our five divisions and give all of your favorites a vote to help send them on to our Judges round. There’s tons of inspiration to be found in these Under-1000-square foot homes, and to prove it, here are 10 reader faves from the past week – check them out and be sure to click through to the main page to see ALL the entries. Happy voting!

If the look of your home isn’t quite where you want it to be, it could be because you’re holding on to things that are dragging your decor down. Does anything on this list sound familiar? If so, consider whether passing it along would give you the freedom you need to take your space to the next level. Things that used to fit your style, but don’t anymore.

If you look at a lot of New York apartment listings (which often include photos of the previous occupants’ stuff, because brokers are hot to get those places on the market), you’ll notice that a lot of small apartments look… cluttered. Really, really cluttered. Of course clutter is a challenge for anyone who lives in a house and owns things, but it’s an especial challenge for tiny apartment dwellers. Have less stuff (purge, purge, purge).

Trust us, the Swedish know a thing or two about living well in small spaces.

Bow down to their organizational brilliance.

This little London house, situated in what used to be an alley, is only 7.5 feet wide. So the architects tasked with designing an extension to the home faced a unique challenge — how to bring natural light into a long, narrow building with only a little space for windows on either side.