Small Bedroom Ideas To Maximize Your Space

Small bedrooms don’t have to be boring, utilitarian spaces or crammed with stuff. Here are some small bedroom ideas that will maximize your space.

Spoak

We carefully measure our living rooms to find the optimal couch. We spend hours agonizing over the perfect wallpaper for the powder room. However, sometimes, we forget about our bedrooms when thinking through decorating ideas, perhaps since very few people get to see that space and appreciate our design genius.

If being in your bedroom feels like an act of endurance rather than a pleasure, let's review new ways to design your bedroom that will maximize your small space without cramping your style.

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‍The Bed Is the Biggie in Your Bedroom Layout

It’s easier to design your room layout once you know where to put the bed. Typically, you’d set it against your largest blank wall with plenty of space for tables on each side, but a small room may leave you no such choice.

Go Low Profile

Too many windows are not a bad problem to have, but it can leave you wondering where to put the bed and dresser. That’s right — you may have to commit a decorating faux pas and push your bed under a window. If you use a low-profile style, like an attractive wooden platform bed, it shouldn’t block too much natural light and might actually be the minimalist design approach you need.

Plan a Living Room by Day, Bed by Night

If your bedroom is doing double duty as your living room, like in some studio apartments, prioritize multi-purpose furniture like a daybed.

If space is very limited, you might want to build a raised platform for your living space so that the bed stays out of sight and out of mind. Plus, who doesn’t miss the nostalgia from the bunk beds of our childhood?

Install a Murphy Bed

If your bedroom is also your home office, try a Murphy bed frame. Make no mistake: This isn’t the horrible fold-out couch your grandparents had that left you stooped for days.

Murphy beds can be disguised as a wall panel or built-in unit with a bookcase incorporated into the headboard. Get crafty like the two-thirds of Murphy bed owners who slip the bed mechanism into a cabinet they sourced elsewhere or make themselves.

Headboards for a Small Space

The type of headboard you use may be determined by your room layout (remember those pesky windows?), but chances are you will have plenty of options.

Play Up Your Headboard

Go with a headboard that creates a focal point in the room. A striking four-poster bed commands attention when the rest of the room’s decor is kept to a minimum due to its size. Four-poster beds work with any type of decor; they can even make your space feel big because larger-scale furniture tricks the eye into reading the space as expansive.

An antique headboard with shelving is a storage solution and a headboard in one for a charming and multi-functional eye-catching statement piece. In a pinch, you can install wall shelves with brackets to frame the headboard for totally custom extra storage.

Paint it white to blend seamlessly with your wall and highlight the decorative objects you showcase. Since this is a busier style, keep wall decor and other home decor pieces to a minimum to make the room look calmer.

… Or Nix the Headboard Altogether

If you want the wall to appear expansive or emphasize minimal decor, forget the headboard completely. You may already be doing this because of your window situation, so make the most of having less furniture and create a spare, minimal retreat of neutral colors bathed in sunlight.

Move the headboard to the foot of the bed in the form of an office armoire to store your home office and divide it from your sleeping space for a super functional room division.

Bed Linens

We’re not done with the bed yet! Since it is usually the center of attention, the bedspread you use seriously impacts your space.

Think Neutral Textures, Not Color

Make your bed linen palette more about texture than color contrast to create breathing room. Choose sheets, blankets, and throws in a similar palette that differs more in fiber or texture than color tone. Keeping your duvet the same color as the wall behind your bed, particularly if it is an accent wall, extends the impact of the wall without making the room feel chaotic.

Don’t Go Crazy With Throw Pillows

We know. Throw pillows are so very, very tempting.

We want our rooms to feel as comfortable as the finest hotel or guest room we’ve ever stayed in, but it’s essential not to go overboard with throw pillows and bolsters. They can make your space feel cluttered.

Not to mention, stacking these rarely used pillows on the floor each night seems like an extra chore that we don’t want to add to our growing to-do list. Find a balance that works well in your small space.

Bedside Table

Flanking your bed with bedside tables is probably not an option if your bedroom is small. There are lots of ways to get the same features of a table without actually having one.

Rely on Floating Shelves

If you’re short on floor space, keep as much off of the floor as humanly possible. That means hanging floating tables rather than using traditional nightstands. Nightstand shelves can be slim in design, with just a tabletop or a few drawers for holding device chargers, reading glasses, etc.

Transform Dressers Into Bedside Tables

Maybe it would be worth placing two full-sized nightstands with drawers on each side of your bed if it meant you wouldn’t need a large dresser. Thrift a pair of petite dressers for nightstands with roomier drawers to store clothes instead.

Why does your bedside table have to be a piece of furniture? If you have an unruly book collection and a shortage of storage space, stack some in a coordinating palette beside your bed. You’ll have a place for your phone, your current read on top, and an opportunity to enjoy your collection.

Build a DIY Desk

You may need a spot for your laptop to work but don’t have room for a full-sized desk. Wedging a wooden desktop or kitchen counter slab (cut to size) into a recessed area or closet nook may be the perfect solution. Get creative with it: a window sill that can be replaced with a larger slab of wood for a desktop or a dropdown secretary-style cabinet door that becomes a desk.

Many slimline wall storage shelves pull out to form a desk, but you don’t have to invest a ton into modular desks. If you have a counter or desktop, wall brackets, and a drill, you can create your own inconspicuous desk without taking up too much space.

Light Fixtures for All Scenarios

Letting tons of natural light pour in during the day through sheer curtains makes a small room feel larger. Layer in other lighting options for all of your daily needs.

Light Your Tasks

Task lights or an antique desk lamp can provide work light by day and more ambiance at night.

If you have limited space for bedside table lamps, consider mid-century sconces flanking the bed to bring a modern edge to a traditional lighting solution.

Expressive Chandeliers

An expressive way to light your bedroom is a chandelier that might make up for the restraint you have shown in your other furnishings. You can go glam with crystal or boho with a draped, beaded fixture. Beaded fixtures may be the most intense piece in your small bedroom design, so think expressive statement pieces.

Wall Color Scheme

When it comes to bedroom wall color schemes, you have two main options: create the illusion of spaciousness or play up the coziness of the small dimensions with color and pattern.

One Dramatic Color Choice

If you want to create a feeling of extra space, painting walls one dramatic color — be it white or saturated — is a smart solution. Built-ins or other shelving attached to walls can be in the same neutral color so that they blend in rather than distract.

The Accent Wall

Your wall space can take on a darker color and still feel expansive when the paint is carried over the wall trim, and excess decor is removed. Even painting one accent wall can create a similar effect if the color is the focal point of the room, with few distractions.

Let a dark and moody wallpaper or paint color compensate for your small room’s lack of space by adding mystery and warmth.

Indulgent Jewel-Box

Carrying bold wall paint or wallpaper around the room and up over the ceilings for a jewel-box effect makes a big statement in a small space. Keep this look from being overwhelming by letting the walls be the ornament of your room. All other furniture should be minimal, and patterns should be limited.

If making a drastic change to your wall color is intimidating, try the look with Spoak’s design tools before you buy any paint.

Window Treatments

Make your room feel larger by hanging curtains from ceiling to floor for an illusion of vertical space and a bit of drama to boot. Let more light in with sheers or curtains that pull all the way away from the window frame to fully reveal the view.

Save the Best for Last

It may have taken you a while to bring your interior design ideas to your bedroom, but now that you have, it may just be your favorite room in the house. Don’t rob yourself of a relaxing, clutter-free bedroom space for recharging.

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^{Photo Credit:}^{(Left) House & Garden}

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^Sources:

^{Curator Finds Murphy Bed's Place in American History | At the Smithsonian}

^{Wall beds: Space saving DIY | Chicago Tribune}

^{Secretary | furniture | Britannica}

For more room ideas, check out Spoak’s discovery feed for bedroom design ideas from other creatives.

Date Posted

February 8, 2023

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