*This is a collaborative guest post
6 Clever Tips to Make Your Micro Flat Look Bigger
Micro Flats are the new craze. As rent goes up, students and anyone living on a spartan budget without owning property in big cities knows the struggle.
The Telegraph speaks about a housing crisis in the UK, especially in London where workers risk being pushed out of the city due to the expensive rent and properties.
As a consequence, many companies want to invest in building entire neighbourhoods with micro flats. It seems that the trend of small flats is not going away anytime soon.
But the switch doesn’t have to be a miserable experience. With a touch of colour, the right decor, and some solid organisation skills, you can make it work.
The secret to making small spaces look bigger is to focus on functionality since there’s no room for wasted space.
Knowing all this, let’s take a look at 7 tips that will make your small nest look bigger and more stylish.
1. Don’t Cut Corners
If you are working from home or you just need a desk but have no space for one, free up one of your corners.
Corner desk come in a large variety. If you don’t have the money to buy one at the moment, you can go full DIY with materials bought from eBay or a local second-hand market.
If you need to store books, CD’s, or you simply want to create some space for your plants, corner shelves can do the trick as well.
2. Make Use of Doors
The doors of your cabinets can be the perfect place to store pots, trash bins, or baskets that hold small tools. On the back of your cabinet doors, you can also glue a magnetic board to store scissors, tweezers, etc.
Removable adhesive hooks are your friend when it comes to door storage. You can use them in your bathroom in case you don’t have a towel rack.
If you have a tall closet, the door of your closet can hold lighter items—such as underwear, hats, scarves or jewellery—in baskets.
3. Use White for Your Walls
White walls give the illusion of a bigger place. Plus, they make your furniture and home decor stand out, giving the illusion of depth as well.
Color also influences your mood. Brighter colors give you more energy, while darker colors put you in a gloomier state. If you were to invest in a star projector, this would allow you to add depth and beauty to your room without needing to include paintings or decorations which would limit your space.
Navy blue and charcoal walls look beautiful on Pinterest boards. But the truth is, most people don’t want to spend most of their time in dark rooms. Check out the fantastic fantastic guide of painting tips to learn what basics of paintings you could handle yourself.
4. Let the Light In
If you have a small space and you’ve made the effort to paint your walls white, then make sure it gets the right amount of sunlight in too. Strategically place lights around the window area. Instead of going for heavy curtains over the windows, try some cordless cellular shades. Whatever you do, just stay away from thick, heavy curtains that darkens the room constantly, and even when pulled back, will still take up valuable space.
With those shades pulled back, you want to let it as much light as possible. Hire a window cleaning company to get a mirror like finish on your windows to open up the outside world and let the natural light flow in.
5. Invest in Furniture Made Specifically for Small Places
From foldable tables to hidden cabinets and beds with storage space, these pieces of furniture are worth the investment.
With the right furniture, you can easily transform your dining room into a bedroom before you go to sleep. Many micro flats don’t have a dining room. Instead, they only consist of a bathroom, kitchen and a bedroom. There are no hallways either.
But with a few tweaks, you can get the best of both worlds. You can have both a dining room and pay less rent.
Shelves are also a great idea since most people ignore the space on their walls. Tall cabinets come in handy when you don’t have much space horizontally.
Even the spaces above doors and under the windows can be used for shelves, and some stairs can be made with hidden drawers.
6. Read up on Minimalism
You’ve probably read about decluttering and minimalism before.
The logic behind this popular trend is to save more space, find the items you need quickly, and feel less pressured to buy things for the sake of buying.
More space, less time spent cleaning, and a bigger budget? It sounds good to me.
If you have any items you don’t use on a frequent basis, clothes you no longer wear, or old items that need to be fixed, you should reconsider keeping them.
If they’re in a good state, maybe someone else would be happy to use them.
Clothes that have holes in them can be transformed into shopping bags or reusable rags, and items that can’t be reused or donated have no place in a small apartment anyway.
Solutions for Items You Don’t Want to Give up
We could all benefit from a little bit of decluttering. There are items that happen to be either expensive or have a lot of emotional value.
Who can give up on leather hardcover books inherited from their parents, or some fancy cabinet from the last century?
Keep in mind that a micro flat is sometimes a temporary solution too, especially for young people who just started climbing the ladder and have high hopes for the future, financially speaking.
In situations like this, self-storage services can be handy, even if your items are small and you don’t need a huge storage unit.