Furniture that makes a small space feel bigger

Griffith has no shortage of character homes, cosy older cottages, first apartments near town, and granny flats out the back for a grown-up kid or an ageing parent. If you are working with a smaller bedroom or living room, the instinct is often to think about knocking out a wall or adding on. Before you get that far, it is worth looking at your furniture first, because the right pieces can make a tight room live twice its size without touching a single stud.

Let furniture do double duty

The fastest way to free up floor space is to stop buying furniture that only does one job. A sleeper sofa is the classic example, because it gives you a proper lounge for every day and a real bed the moment family comes to stay, without needing a spare room sitting empty the other 350 nights of the year. The same thinking applies to an ottoman that opens up for blanket storage, a console table that also works as a slim desk, or a bed frame with drawers built into the base. Every piece that pulls double duty is one less piece you need to squeeze in.

Get the scale right before anything else

A small room does not automatically need small furniture. What it needs is furniture with the right scale and proportion, because a single well sized sofa or bed frame will always read better than three undersized pieces crowding the same footprint. Look for exposed legs rather than skirted bases, because a bit of visible floor underneath a chair or sofa tricks the eye into reading more open space than there actually is. Lighter tones help too, since a pale timber or fabric will not swallow up a compact room the way a heavy dark piece can.

Beds that give you the floor back

Bedrooms are usually the tightest squeeze in any home, and the bed is the piece taking up most of the real estate. That is exactly where a storage bed earns its keep, tucking drawers or a lift up base underneath the mattress so winter doonas, out of season clothes and spare linen have somewhere to live that is not the top of the wardrobe. Pair that with a slim profile headboard instead of a bulky upholstered one and you have claimed back a surprising amount of usable room without losing an inch of sleeping space. Our small space bedroom furniture range is built around exactly this problem, so it is worth a look if your bedroom feels like it is fighting you.

Small pieces you can move around

Nesting tables are one of those pieces that look like a small idea and solve a big problem. Slide two or three together as one coffee table for most of the week, then pull them apart the moment you need extra surfaces for a card game, a laptop, or drinks with friends. Because they store inside each other, they take up the footprint of a single table and do the work of several. The same logic works with stackable stools or a folding side table, anything that can shrink down when you are not using it and expand when you are.

Come see it for yourself

Photos only tell you so much about how a piece will actually sit in your room, which is why the best next step is walking through our Griffith showroom and trying the scale for yourself. Bring a rough measurement of your space and our team will help you build a layout that makes the most of every square metre. Start with our small space bedroom furniture collection and go from there.