how to make the best of small bedrooms?

[goshitswarm]

We're planning to buy a 3 bed house that has a lovely kitchen/dining/living space and surprisingly large garden.

Buying in London, so compromise required somewhere! In this case, the main issue is that that bedrooms are v small. We want two of them to have double beds (main and guest) and then the third is for baby (doesn't need much room so no problem).

Guest bedroom 3.56m x 2.36m (inclusive of fitted wardrobe. want to have normal size double bed). Would prefer to have proper bed in there (not sofa bed) due to elderly parents.

Main bedroom 3.56m x 2.87m (no fitted wardrobes. want to have kingsize bed - had for years and smaller bed would be bad for marriage!).

In both, there will be really not much space around the beds and any other furniture will have to be very limited (and given layout of the rooms, we might actually have to come up with a solution to ensure the doors will actually open and not hit the beds!) I'm basically hoping that bedrooms being mainly for sleeping, the size of the rooms won't have much impact on quality of life, as most of life will take place in the living space.

Any views on whether that's true? generally I'm someone who loves to have a bit of space to whirl around in. but we can't have everything we want in this life, right...?

And then, good suggestions for making the most of small bedrooms? Obviously radical decluttering before the move will be one solution (quite looking forward to that...) but interested in any and all bright ideas!

We chose our house for a number of very good reasons, but sheesh, the size of the bedrooms was not one of them! Our master and guest bedrooms are pretty much exactly the same size as your master, and fit the following:

Master
Kingsize bed - high, victorian style with room for wickers baskets storing sheets underneath.
Bedside tables - narrow, but surprisingly commodious (they take about 5 pairs of pyjamas because I'm rubbish at getting rid)
Tall 2 door wardrobe with drawers under - makes use of height of the room, and carries all of our day to day things.
Room for dressing table, but we haven't bought it yet - again, going for narrower style.
Shelf.
Big fancy mirror planned!

Guest room
Double bed (low base, chosen for small frame not taking up extra space)
Single bedside table leaving only a narrow corridor on that side of the bed.
Desk sitting on other side of bed, to give lamp and table if other guest needs it.
Chest of drawers - would choose a slightly shallower one if we didn't have this already.
Multiple shelves.
Room for 3 door wardrobe.

Now the master is set up purely for sleeping - we take any clothes out and hang in the guest room for dressing most days. It doesn't have any 'hangout' space in it, but is intended to be a beautiful and peaceful place we come at the end of the day. It looks 'filled' with furniture, but not 'stuffed'.

The second bedroom, by the arrangement and size of furniture, looks a lot larger - there's room to walk around the bed, there's more pieces of furniture, and they're less imposing on the room - there's space for 3-4 people to stand in there.

I worried about it, but honestly now I'm fine with my layouts - we chose them because downstairs is so fantastic, and that really is where we LIVE. Even my mum - who is the least 'hang out in the kitchen' type person you'll meet - seems to enjoy spending time there!

I could go on about this all day... is there anything specific that's particularly worrying you? I have 100% been there, and it would be a shame to waste my geeky obsessiveness about it!

BTW I also have a small third bedroom - if you're happy to perhaps share the floorplan of your house, I have tips for really small ones too!

It’s worth looking a little ahead too, before you spend too much on the first room. How long are you imagining the baby will be in the smallest room for? Is a local hotel an option for guests? How often do you really need the spare room? Would a good sofa bed downstairs be an option?
Not quite what you asked, I realise.

In terms of small spaces, get as much storage to be vertical. So a tall chest of drawers or a wardrobe with shelving rather than adding a standard chest of drawers. Etc.

Are you on Pinterest? It’s good for storage solutions.

Make as much of the storage vertical if you can. So think about having as high a bed as you can possibly get, so that you can get deep storage baskets under there. You can get some under bed storage on casters, so it is easy to access.

Wardrobes with cubbies inside, so that you can store things folded.

Use the wall space, rather than just seeing the wall space as being decorative.

Made to measure will help maximise space, if you can afford it. Carpenters are clever people.

What about those slidey doors that either fit into a pocket or I seen some cool industrial looking ones too with visible fixtures where the door slides.

*I’ve

Ottoman beds offer a large amount of storage.

Thanks so much for all this advice - really great of you all to spend the time.

thecatsthecats we’re hopefully finding out tomorrow if our offer has been accepted, and if it works out I might well risk sharing the floor plan! Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts.

We moved to a house with similarly proportions, for the same downstairs reasons. Our bedrooms are not large, although there’s only 2 of us. The fitted wardrobes in the main bedroom have drawers fitted in them. We also use the fitted wardrobes in the guest room. We also have a Kingsize bed with storage underneath for shoes, handbags etc.Our bedside drawer tables are from Argos, not the most brilliant quality, but they are smaller proportions ( because they’re cheap?)
We have a narrow, but tall chest of drawers, which doubles as a dressing table and a large mirror above the Victorian fireplace.
The household linen is stored in a cupboard in the guest bedroom, where there were 3 alcoves, now with floor to ceiling fitted cupboards.
Fortunately our 3rd bedroom is also a small double, used as a study.
DH is of the opinion that living space is more important than sleeping space.

Same set up here. Apartment therapy is a great website for ideas on small space living (e.g. little adjustments like having a bedside shelf rather than a bedside table). Have a look at vintage furniture or the futon company for chests of drawers etc that are full-sized but slim.

My other tip would be not to spend too much on your spare bed! We realised that neither set of grandparents actually wanted to stay in the house once DD arrived ! We got rid of the bed and now she is a toddler it is a much better use of space to have it as a playroom / study.

Any news OP?

Because of various issues we're in the smaller bedroom in our house - just about fits a double bed with minimal furniture. We're in the middle of getting fitted bedroom furniture around the remaining wall to maximise the space and look clutter free - and with double hanging wardrobes around we should have a fair bit of space in there.

Honestly though even with it being the woodchip shitpit graveyard it currently is - if you're just viewing it as a room to sleep in... it's fine.

I'd be interested to hear what you think you're going to do as we're about to exchange in our house. (tomorrow! 🤞)
Whilst with us the 1st and 2nd bedrooms are pretty huge, the 3rd is very small and would take an occasional double bed (think day bed) but it's too small for real storage.
It does have one of those over the stairs boxes and high ceilings so we can use that as a small guest wardrobe type thing.
Aside from taking part of the master we're a bit flummoxed as to what to do with it!
I hope things went well today OP!

Thanks for asking guys! We didn’t get the house... it was a complicated situation involving a sale that had fallen through a few times before, and their original buyer re-emerged at the last minute.

My DH is a bit gutted (he had a big crush on the shed...) but I don’t mind too much. Obviously we had both invested quite a lot of time thinking about how to make it work (to the extent of starting MN threads about it, even....) but your excellent advice will not go to waste as we are looking at other stuff now and many of them have similarly small bedrooms!

Thanks again for the tips