Space-saving, Multi-functional Furniture

It’s an acknowledged fact that families expand to fill the living space available to them. Students used to communal living will quickly accumulate belongings once they move into their own flat, just as empty nesters gradually expand into the bedrooms and spare rooms vacated by their children. You’ll fill as many cupboards as your home contains and even garages and sheds eventually reach capacity without periodic clearouts.

With this in mind, it’s important to look for furnishings which either perform multiple roles or maximise the use of space. And because saving space around the home is always helpful, we’ve compiled a list of practical tips about making the most of any available space – including things we often tend to take for granted.

Over our heads

We tend to think of rooms in two dimensions – length and width – while ignoring the reams of space above our heads. The average new-build home has ceiling heights of around eight feet, which means roughly a quarter of each room’s internal space is effectively wasted. Rather than buying furniture which only rises to waist or head height, look for tall freestanding units which maximise every cubic foot of space. Modular furniture can also be built up to exploit what would otherwise be wasted space, while high wall-mounted shelves are great for storing occasional-use, fragile or sentimental items.

Three into one does go

There are some truly ingenious multifunctional furniture solutions on the market. From snooker tables which double as dining tables through to bed frames with under-mattress storage and TVs in their base boards, it’s possible to purchase one piece of furniture which performs several roles. Captain’s beds are a classic example of this, elevating a single mattress to maximise available living space. After all, we only use beds for around eight hours a day – making them a (literal and metaphorical) waste of space most of the time.

Look for combi units

There is a popular style of tall shelving unit which typically combines storage space and clothes hooks with a full-height mirror. Sitting on a compact rotating base, this ingeniously space-efficient concept has been adapted by furniture manufacturers to include shelves, hanging rails, pin boards and even make-up storage with recessed illumination. This has the added advantage of keeping hooks, mirrors and other storage solutions away from walls, where they might look cluttered or interfere with décor. And when not in use, these elements can simply be rotated out of sight.

One room, many purposes

We tend to think of rooms as single-purpose – living rooms, dining rooms, and so forth. Yet even a spare bedroom can fulfil many diverse roles. The key is to use furniture in multiple ways. A well-chosen sofa bed provides daytime seating until it’s converted into an auxiliary guest bed, while a flat-screen monitor provides office duties for home-based workers before the kids utilise it for streaming Netflix or playing computer games at night. Many people worry about wall-mounting heavy items, yet modern brackets and batons can bear considerable weight. It’s even possible to buy electric stud finders, ensuring shelves and other wall-mounted items are securely fastened to something more load bearing than plasterboard.

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