Make your small space feel bigger

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0:25Andee Tagle:You want to float furniture? Do you want to float it? Girl, no. No? No. Because what does that even, that is going to look so weird in my place. Apparently, no. I mean, it's an optical illusion that you actually have a little more square footage if everything's not up against the wall. You can do it like three to five inches. It's not like you put it in the center of your living room. If you go to an open house where they've staged it, you'll notice that they never put all of the furniture up against the wall. They always do it like just a little. It gives you the feeling of more space. All right, reporter Andy Tegel coming in straight away with the tips.

0:59I'm Mariel Segara, and today on Life Kit, we're talking about how to make a small space feel bigger. Apparently, and I would say counterintuitively, leaving space between your furniture and the wall is one way to do that. We'll see. Maybe I'll try it. I will say I'm in one of those moments with my apartment right now where I'm looking around and I'm like, it's time to change everything. Oh, yeah. Even though I think it's cute, you know, like it's time for a new paint color or it's time for a new couch or whatever. But I think part of that is as my life has changed, I want to use this space for different things.

1:36And especially in a small space, one room does have to perform multiple functions. And then you have to think about like, what is my priority here?

1:44Andee Tagle:I have a word for you. The word is zoning. And the idea is that you can have, even if you have just one space, if you have an open floor plan, zoning just means like you can zone off different areas of the open floor plan. There's no reason why you can't have a dining room and a living room and a kitchen and a movie area all in that one open room. All right. Well, coming up on this episode of Life Kit, we're going to talk more about floating your furniture. We're going to talk about zoning, about floor arrangements, about how to hang your art. Lots of low-budget and non-permanent solutions to make your space your own.

2:15Andee Tagle:That's after the break.

2:23Richard Reeves is unimpressed by online influencers who peddle ideas about hyper-masculinity. You're talking about boys and men. Where's your policy agenda? You're good on podcasts, but we've actually done a bunch of stuff for boys and men. Sorry, what have you done? Ideas about the next era of manhood. That's on the TED Radio Hour podcast. Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, Andy, what do we need to think about when we're designing small spaces specifically? Like, how's it different when you're trying to make a studio apartment or a one-bedroom your own versus a three-acre farmhouse or a 10-room mansion?

3:04It's a good question.

3:05Andee Tagle:Let me introduce you to Shamika Lynch. She is the founder and principal designer of Maximizing Tiny Interiors in New Jersey. And her answer was, you know, in a lot of ways, a home is a home is a home. So, you know, people got to cook, people got to work, kids need room to play and do their homework. So a lot is the same. But here's what she says is really essential to the design of small spaces specifically. No room can be just an extra room. You don't have any extra square footage where it's like, oh, well, that's just going to be decorative. Every single item in your home needs to serve a purpose.

3:36And our motto is that everything in your home should work for you. And work is a verb there where it needs to have at least two functions, right? Your living room is probably also functioning as your dining room and also functioning as your playroom. Yeah, you really have to make use of all the space you have.

3:52Andee Tagle:Every nook and cranny. And then the other thing is downsizing. All the experts I spoke to said that like more than furniture size or picking the wrong paint color, What is really the enemy of small spaces is clutter. If you have a small space that you want to rearrange, the very first thing you need to do is declutter. Because once you pare down to the things that you really need, it's a lot easier to see how much space you actually need for storage, how you can get creative with solutions. And overall, it can just help you be more intentional with planning your space. Yeah. I always think that I've tackled my clutter.

4:25And then there's another round of decluttering. And I'm like, what? Like, I thought I needed this thing six months ago, but it turns out I really don't.

4:35Andee Tagle:The clutter monster always lives again. After tackling your clutter, or your latest clutter monster at least, you want to organize your stuff in a way that actually makes sense for your life, right? Faith Roberson is a professional organizer and decluttering coach in New York City. And she lived for a while in a 550-square-foot studio, and she wrote the book What Stays and What Goes, How to Organize with Intention and Create Space for Grace. What she told me is when everything has a specific home and a specific purpose, you're going to work better and you're going to feel better. The key to small spaces is learning how to disperse things in multiple areas in order to create a flow and a sense of harmony in the space.

5:18Andee Tagle:I had to start to think, okay, where am I going to put my workout gear? You know, where am I going to put this? Under my bed, I had storage, of course. That's like a no-brainer. and also using the height of the cabinets was important. Just going all the way up to the ceiling. She talks about flow. What does it mean for a space to have good flow? Yeah, I feel like this is a term that you hear a lot when it comes to designing, decorating, but the definition is a little bit slippery. So Shamika told me when she thinks about flow, she thinks about how well all the elements of a home are working together for the people who live in it.

5:54Andee Tagle:So for example, in your kitchen, You know, when you go to put your dishes on the drying rack, is it easy to do? Is it right there? Are you tracking water all over the floor with every dish? That might be one example. If you have to dig in and out of a closet every morning, if you have to hop up and over workout equipment every day, it might be time to rethink. Yeah, that makes sense. And then you also, if you think about that ahead of time, then you know what you might need to buy or repurpose rather than just sort of aimlessly going to a storage store and getting stuff that's not going to work for you.

6:25Right. Well, I know the experts gave you a lot of tips for the apartment from the ground up, really. So let's start with the ground, huh?

6:32Andee Tagle:Let's do it. Yeah. Four coverings. What'd you learn about that? Okay. General rule, I would say, from the experts across the board, rugs are a good idea. In small spaces, they are a quick and easy way to add warmth, to add texture, personality to a space. So if you don't have one, you want to add that to the top of your list. Another great thing about rugs, zoning. So they are a great way to create distinct areas in your home. I thought this was a wonderful tip from Shamika. She works with a lot of people who live in open floor plans. And she says sometimes she doesn't even have to buy something new.

7:03Andee Tagle:she'll just reorient a room by switching up a rug. Everywhere the rug touches is the living room, right? That's the living room rug, like Lion King. Everywhere the light touches is yours. And even if your dining room is right next to the living room, which mine is, there's a dining room rug, right? That says, you know, this is where the dining room is. So rugs really help for that, to define those spaces. It can be a little hard to know what size rug to get. I would say generally speaking, you want to go bigger instead of smaller. When you go too small, the ratios can be off and it can make a room feel accidental.

7:41It reminds me of when Kristen Wiig used to do this on SNL where those doll hands. Yeah. It's like the proportions are off. Right. Yes. You're like, this is like normal size person with like little baby doll hands. Is there something unsettling? And I think that that happens when your rug is too small.

8:00Andee Tagle:Yeah, that is exactly right. The proportions are off. So to help us think through ratio, I'll turn to Alexandra Gator. She's a home decor expert who specializes in making over small spaces for her YouTube channel. It's really fun. Definitely worth a watch. She told me if she had to put a number to it, you want to aim to cover around 75 % of a room with your rug. Whoa. Yeah, it's a lot. Like more than you think. You know, you maybe want to have a clear walkway in between one space or another, one room or another. But generally speaking, you want to have at least the two legs of a couch, the two legs of any chairs, or if you can fit everything.

8:36Andee Tagle:Like if you can fit an entire living room set on a rug, that's a good idea. I will say rugs can be kind of expensive, especially if you're getting a big one. Yeah, it's definitely a higher ticket item when it comes to redecorating. So I did a little bit of sourcing online for you. Rugs USA and IKEA seem to be a couple of the top spots people turn to for low-cost, brand-new quality rugs. Facebook Marketplace and OfferUp. Also, not bad ideas for secondhand options. Coming up, how to arrange your furniture to make your room feel bigger. That's after the break.

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9:45Andee Tagle:And although they weren't citizens, many got special protections to keep living and working here. Now, though, they find themselves in legal limbo as the Trump administration tightens the screws on immigrants. Listen to NPR's Code Switch podcast in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

10:03Okay, let's move on to furniture arrangement. We were talking about floating furniture. Can you just explain exactly what that means and why we're supposedly supposed to do it?

10:16Andee Tagle:Okay, so floating means you don't put your furniture, say a couch, right up against the wall. You just leave some space behind it. And what that does is create the illusion of additional depth. And it can actually make a room seem bigger. Another version of that is you can also float your furniture into the middle of a big open room or big long room. And you can use it to zone the space into different sections. So, for example, you can turn that couch sideways and define a space, too. Like this is the living room and this is the dining room or whatever. What do we do about the back of the couch thing?

10:47Like having to look at the back of the couch?

10:50Andee Tagle:You anchor it. That was Alexandra's idea. If the floating feels weird, maybe you put a little console there. Maybe it's your desk, right? You anchor it. You put a rug underneath that whole thing so that you have your specific zones and it grounds the whole area. What about the size of your furniture? Like, how do you decide how big of a couch to get or how big of a table to get? But I would say overall and surprisingly, the experts cautioned more against going too small rather than going too big. Like the first example that came to my mind was like a dorm room in college that hasn't been decorated yet.

11:24Andee Tagle:You see a big blank wall and all they have is like a teeny tiny picture or two from home on that big blank wall. And it just doesn't look right. It doesn't feel right. No. Apparently there's a name for this kind of feeling. They call it the dollhouse effect where, you know, if you put too many small things in a space, it creates visual clutter. It almost looks like a mistake because the scale is off. Let's say I have a sofa that is 84 inches. If I have a 5x7 rug, it looks like there's something missing. Something else needs to go there. Yeah. I'm thinking about, too, like, regarding the size of the furniture, obviously you also have to think about how you're using it and what your priorities are.

12:02Like, for me, I really wanted an extra deep couch this time just to be able to fit more people on it. Yeah.

12:10Andee Tagle:You don't have to go small just because you're in a small space. You do want to be purposeful with the large furniture that you buy. You want to make sure that you're buying it for the right reasons with the lifestyle that you have in mind. Another question that I had was, you know, what if you have something that you really love? You know, like a keepsake, family heirloom that you love, but it isn't super practical. And Faith had a really good answer for this. Like, can you make it functional? You know, you don't necessarily need to buy something new. You don't need to toss it. You don't need to put it in storage.

12:37Andee Tagle:Faith told me about this hutch that she's had for a million years. I think it was like an entertainment center or something. I got on Craigslist and then I added a pole and made it into a wardrobe. And then here, I brought it here and I just added shelves and turned it into like a shoe cabinet. It has lived nine lives and it's big and my living room isn't that wide. So it takes up space, but it's all about how you style it, right? So then I put this really beautiful like plant next to it. And I think I have like a lamp on the other side. and it becomes a part of like art in the space. But it also solves a really big issue that I have, which is not having a home for my shoes.

13:18I love that. Yeah. I love having that piece that stays with you and that you can alter over time. Yeah. Okay, let's talk more about walls. What about wallpaints and wallpaper? What did you learn?

13:31Andee Tagle:So I have some news for you, Mariel. I know that you have some feelings about this, but apparently the accent wall is out. for small spaces? You know, I like my accent wall. I think it looks nice. I'm sure that it does. Let me explain to you why. Basically, they were saying if your goal is to make your small space bigger, they were saying you want continuity. I was kind of expecting them to say you want white or light colors. I was expecting, you know, invite light. You want to make it as sunshiny as you can in a small space to expand it, avoid darker, moodier tones. But really no they were like whatever you like go for it but what is important is to be consistent in your palette one idea that was popular was color drenching so shemika said if you don't have fancy trim if you have just like plain baseboards you could paint the trim the same color so go from your baseboards all the way up to your ceiling consider doing that all the same color and that continuity can create some extra space can create extra height and depth for you wallpaper alexandra said wallpaper on ceilings is a thing that's popular and that she loves.

14:34Andee Tagle:Yeah. You could go big. Stop. Yeah. Is that hard to do though? Yes. I'm breaking my neck trying to. She said it's a commitment. She did say it's a commitment. So something to think about. Slightly less of commitment, but can help make your space bigger. Curtains. So one good idea is just to hang your curtains a little bit higher and a little bit wider than your window frame. One guide I saw set about 6 to 12 inches higher than where your window frame is. And then you want to extend your curtain rod 4 to 10 inches beyond that frame. And doing that can help extend your eye. And then Alexandra had a great rule of thumb about how long your curtains should be.

15:12Making sure your curtains just kiss the floor. Find like pooling curtains. It just collects dust. It doesn't look like you've thought it through. So just kind of kissing the floor is the rule that I love to follow when it comes to curtains.

15:23Andee Tagle:Just kiss the floor. What about art? I have a gallery wall, and although I think that I did it partly because I don't know how to do anything else. Like, in terms of art, I feel like when I've just had a big piece, it's never been big enough, or two big pieces, they've never been big enough, and then everything feels kind of empty. I guess I wonder, is there a science to this? Like, to how to hang your art in small spaces to make it feel bigger? So one rule for you, Shamika said for hanging art, the center of your art should be at eye level when you're hanging art. So for gallery walls specifically, Shamika said, you know, it is okay to go on vibes.

16:04Andee Tagle:She said she aims for roughly two to four inches of space between frames or between items. She did say that the thing about gallery walls is sometimes in small spaces, they can get a little bit busy. So you want to make sure if you're doing it in a big open space that you have a piece of furniture to anchor it. A nice open, sparse hallway is a good idea for a gallery wall. You could do a gallery wall in a corner to create the illusion of space. So it doesn't necessarily need to be one flat wall. Another one is like a triptych situation. So if you have a piece of art that you really like, you can print it out over three, get like three frames, blow it up like over your bed, say, that can create the illusion of like expanding the wall.

16:43Andee Tagle:And then generally speaking, having different frame textures, different frame depths, you know, like shadow box situations can create more visual interest, create more depth there. What about mirrors? Yes, is my answer. Yes, you want them. Good for small spaces. Helps expand the space. Helps catch more light. Alexandra said a lot of people are really into floor mirrors right now. Very popular. But she said hanging mirrors, small ones in your gallery wall, ones that you can hang over the door for space saving measures. All the mirrors all the time. Yes. These are all such great ideas. And I'm in the midst of a lot of home improvement right now.

17:21I don't even know when this started or how this happened, because I thought I was in a place where I was like settled in the apartment. I'd made a lot of changes and I was like, OK, now we're good. But suddenly here I am in the vortex again. And it's fun, but it's also kind of, I don't know, I have this sense of urgency to it. Like I need to do everything now. And the space isn't good enough as it is right now, which I think is a trap. I guess I just like I try to remind myself that it's okay to let this unfold over time.

17:56Andee Tagle:Right. As long as your house still feels like home when you get back at the end of the day, you know, I think that's what's important. There's always going to be something left to be done. Yeah. Right. I was talking to Faith about a similar idea. And she said, if you haven't found your flow in your home yet, you should just keep working at it. And doing that, finding that flow is kind of like doing a jigsaw puzzle. There's always like one more piece to put back together. Have you ever put a piece in a puzzle and it looks like it should fit, right? And then there's like this little sliver of space and you convince yourself that it's the right piece.