Life Kit - Make your small space feel bigger

Episode Date: June 2, 2026

Floating your furniture, zoning, floor arrangements and art -- there are lots of ways to make a small space or a small home feel bigger. In this episode, Life Kit host Marielle Segarra speaks with reporter Andee Tagle about low-budget, renter-friendly solutions to make your small space work for you.Follow us on Instagram: @nprlifekitSign up for our newsletter here.Have an episode idea or feedback you want to share? Email us at [e-mail] the show and listen to it sponsor-free by signing up for Life Kit+ at plus.npr.org/lifekitSee pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Life Kit from NPR. You want to float furniture? Do we want to float it? Girl, no. No? No, because what is 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 Tagle, coming in straight away with the tips.

I'm Mary L. Sagadaa 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 try. 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. And 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? I have a word for you. The word is zoning. And the idea is that you can have, even though, 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. 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 you're wrong.

That's after the break. 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? It's a good question. 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 as 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. And 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. 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 pair 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. And 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. 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 co-keleton. 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 world. the space, 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 Shemika 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. 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, 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. Right. 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? Let's do it.

Four coverings? What did you learn about that? Okay. General role, 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 Shemika. 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. 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 room, which mine is, there's a dining room

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. It reminds me of when Kristen Wigg used to do this on SNL, where are those doll hands? Yeah. It's like the proportions are off.

Right. Yes, exactly that. This is like normal size person with like little baby doll hands. Yes. Is there something unsettling? And I think that that happens when your rug is too small. 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 a small. 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. 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 offer up also not bad ideas for second-hand options. Coming up, how to arrange your furniture to make your room feel bigger. That's after the break. Okay, 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? 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 living room and this is the dining room or whatever. What do we do about the back of the couch thing? Like having to look at the back

of the couch? You anchor it. That was Alexander'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? 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. 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 5 by 7 rug, it looks like there's something missing. Something else needs to go there. Yeah. I'm thinking about to like, regarding the size of the front, furniture, obviously you also have to think about how you're using it and what your priorities are. Like, for me, I really wanted an extra deep couch this time, just to be able to fit more people on it. Yeah. 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 I keep a sake, 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. 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. I 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 walking. What about wall paint and wallpaper? What did you learn? 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 palate. 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. Yeah. You could go big. Stop.

Yeah. Is that hard to do, though? I'd be breaking my neck. She said it's a commitment. She did say it's a commitment. It's okay. 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 six to 12 inches higher than where your window frame is, and then you want to extend your curtain rod four 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. Making sure your curtains just kiss the floor. If I'm 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. 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, Shemika said for hanging. art, the center of your art should be at eye level when you're hanging art. So for gallery wall specifically, Shamika said, you know, it is okay to go on vibes. 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 triptic 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. 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. I 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 made a lot of changes and I was like, okay, 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 that.

this unfold over time. 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. 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. And then you start building on the puzzle and you can only go so far before you're like, oh, this is not. And it's messing up the way I can move forward. Organizing is like that.

That reminds me of Sudoku when I'm very far down the Sudoku puzzle and I'm like, oh my God, that's not. Good thing I did this in pencil. But it's understanding that we do kind of have to live our lives pencil. You're right. Your home never looks like a magazine or Instagram, but like would you want it to? Yeah. Andy, thank you so much for this. Oh, it's been a pleasure. Let me know if you float your furniture. I'm going to try it. I'll do it a little shelf behind it. All right, folks, it's time for a recap. Takeaway one. To make your small space feel bigger, you want to start by decluttering. When you get rid of the stuff you don't actually use or want around, you will literally have more space. And it'll be easier to make a plan and reimagine your home. in a way that flows. Takeaway two, small spaces need to work harder for you.

So make the most of your vertical space. Think about high up shelves, for instance, and get creative with your storage. For instance, I just got a couch and it has storage built into the seats. Takeaway three, you can have big, beautiful furniture in a small space, but you have to be mindful of proportion and scale. You want to make sure the space flows and that it's usable. Also, this is about tradeoffs. If your couch takes up most of the living room,

You may not have space for a big dining table. So think about your priorities and how you actually want to use your home. Takeaway four, in tight spaces, you can create the illusion of height and depth. That might look like floating your furniture or painting the walls creatively or using rugs or a console table or a bookshelf to separate your space into zones. It could also mean adding mirrors or hanging your curtains higher. You've got a lot of options. All right, that's our show. If you love Life Kit and you want even more, why not follow us on Instagram at NPR Life Kit?

There you'll find videos featuring our favorite tips and comics on topics like how to talk to your baby and how to turn your lawn into a native plant garden. You can find those by following at NPR Life Kit. This episode of Life Kit was produced by Claire Murray Schneider and reported by Andy Tagle. It was edited by Sylvie Douglas. Our digital editor is Malika Garib and our visuals editor is C.J. Riegelon. Megan Cain is our senior supervising editor and Beth Donovan is our executive producer. Our production team also includes Margaret Serino.

Engineering support comes from Tiffany Vera Castro and Becky Brown. I'm Mariel Segarra. Thanks for listening.