Design Tips for Small Space Living: Video 1 of 2
Do you have a tiny home? Feel like there’s nowhere to put your belongings and the walls are closing in!? In this televised series of “Creative Living”, Kimball Starr is featured in this 2-part segment where she shares ideas on how to maximize the space in your home and live large in a small space. After you’ve watched this, the second half of the segment can be found at Design Tips for Small Space Living: Video 2 of 2.
Video transcript below:
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– [Announcer] With your host, Sheryl Borden.
– [Sheryl] Kimball, thank you so much for being here. As a designer, I’m sure you’re asked all kinds of interesting questions from people but, today I thought it would be a fun if we could talk about a small living space or the space that we have available, but sometimes it’s so cramped that it’s hard to entertain or hard to, to have multiple tasks going on. What suggestions do you have for us?
– [Kimball] Exactly, you hit it on, you hit the nail on the head. Definitely, in small spaces, there are some things you can do. One: You can work with how the space looks so you can make it more contemporary, very little ornamentation, keep clutter out of the way.
– Keep it simple.
– Yes. Clever ways to store items and finding furniture that serves dual-purpose is really important. So something like a coffee table that you can sit on but it also serves storage needs.
– Aha. Oh, good. Okay, let’s look. This will be fun!
– So I have lots of examples here. So we’ve got a bathroom, which is, everyone’s got small bathrooms. Here, using this cabinet, using built-in storage. If people can afford to do custom built-ins, I definitely recommend it because every inch is invaluable in a small space. So when you walk in, the toilet is actually on the other side of this cabinet.
– So it’s a divider, right?
– That’s right. So instead of being against the wall, it’s actually perpendicular to the wall so it serves storage needs but it’s also a privacy divider. So, this is a situation where you’re using your furniture to serve multiple purposes. And then, angling your floor tiles will help make the space seem bigger as well. And in showers, if you use a curbless shower so you don’t have anything to step over which is easier to get in and out of the shower.
– That’s a good point.
– And it also makes the space flow and…
– Instead of breaking it up with that divider.
– And using the same floor material, so it’s the same tile that is on the outside going in so it’s just one seamless look. And then of course, as I just said, utilizing custom built-ins. This utilizes every square inch…
– Great space.
– …flush [to the wall] and then, it doesn’t feel cramped because we have the frameless shower glass on the left so you still have this visual open space.
– Oh, instead of something blocking if it were a solid, we can just continue our look.
– Absolutely. Now here’s a custom built-in media cabinet, which is wall-mounted. So by wall-mounting, it leaves space underneath for air to flow which is really important to not have a space feel cluttered, and this serves multiple purposes. We can serve alcohol and glassware up here. We can have this to serve drinks, and below is all the media and AV storage. It’s wall-mounted, the power goes straight through the wall. It’s wired into an overhead ceiling projector. The ceiling projector projects onto a pull-down screen. You can watch your internet, you can play video games.
– Oh my goodness!
– You can watch sports.
– And, and no wires. I love that. It’s not that cluttered look with all the wires.
– It’s amazing. That’s right, and you can roll the projection screen, which is also ceiling-mounted, up and down and get it out of the way and you don’t have to waste space storing a TV. And for a dining area, using transparent or translucent furniture lets the space feel more spacious. Glass coffee tables, translucent chairs….
– Again, because we see through it.
– That’s right.
– It doesn’t block or stop our vision. I see.
– Absolutely. And also with the cabinetry, it’s seamless in that it’s all the same color so it just fades into the background. But the nice thing is, having the glossy black of the refrigerator helps reflect light and actually gives it more depth. So, it feels like the space has more depth to it. And then if you’re lucky enough to have floor-to-ceiling glass windows…
– Oh, yeah.
– …that definitely, it makes the walls dissolve, but not everybody is quite that fortunate.
Kimball Starr is a San Francisco award winning interior design firm whose interior design has been featured on national television and globally published in a series of hardcover books. Diverse spaces spanning contemporary design to traditional interiors are indicative of the variety of styles provided by this San Francisco Bay Area design firm.
