Four awkward rooms, and what I actually do with them
Clients often apologise for their rooms. There is no need. Almost every awkward room in this country is one of four or five recurring shapes, and each of them has a known set of answers. Here are the four I meet most often.
1. The flat with no hallway
The front door opens straight into the living room. You arrive home and you are already in the room where you relax, still holding wet shoes.
The fix is to build a threshold that is not a wall. Three things do it together:
A change underfoot for the first 90 to 120 cm inside the door. A different floor material, or a run of tiles, or at minimum a good mat recessed into the floor.
Something to put things on and in. A bench about 40 cm deep with shoe storage under it and hooks above is enough. Deeper than 45 cm and it starts to crowd the door swing.
A different light. A small wall light or a downlight over that zone, on its own switch, so the arrival area can be lit without lighting the whole room.
Do all three and the brain reads it as a hall, even though nothing has been built. Do only one and it reads as clutter.
2. The room with a sloping ceiling
Loft conversions and top-floor flats. The usual mistake is treating the room as if it were square and then being surprised that nothing fits.
I measure the ceiling height at intervals across the slope and mark the lines where it passes 190 cm, 150 cm and 90 cm. Those three lines decide everything:
Above 190 cm, you can stand comfortably. This is where you walk, and where a wardrobe can go.
Between 150 and 190 cm, you can sit, dress and use a desk, but you will hit your head if you stand up quickly. This is where a bed head, a dressing table or a window seat belongs.
Below 150 cm, it is storage. Built-in drawers, low cupboards, or shoes. Never a walkway.
Put the bed with its head at the low side and you gain the standing height where you need it. Build the wardrobes to follow the slope rather than stopping at a straight line, and you gain back the triangle that would otherwise be dead.
3. The narrow galley kitchen
The rule that matters is the gap down the middle. Two facing runs of units need at least 110 cm clear between the worktop edges for one person to work comfortably, and closer to 120 cm if two of you cook or an oven door has to open into it.
Standard base units are 60 cm deep. So two runs plus a working gap needs about 240 cm of room width as an absolute minimum, and it will feel tight.
If your kitchen is narrower than that, stop trying to fit two runs. One full run of 60 cm units along the longer wall, with a shallow bank of 35 to 40 cm tall storage opposite, gives you a kitchen that works and a corridor you can pass someone in. You lose a little worktop and gain the ability to use the room.
A second thing, less obvious: in a galley, put the tall items at one end rather than splitting them. A run broken up by a tall fridge in the middle reads as two small kitchens rather than one proper one.
4. The box bedroom
Under about 7 square metres, usually with the door and the window fighting for the same wall.
What works:
Clear space on one side of the bed only, at 55 to 60 cm. Two clear sides is a luxury this room does not have, and pretending otherwise costs you the wardrobe.
Storage above head height. The top 60 cm of the walls is almost always empty in a small bedroom, and it is the cheapest space in the house.
No swinging wardrobe door if you can avoid it. A hinged door needs its own depth again to open. Sliding doors, or an open run with a curtain, give that space back.
Wall lights or clamp lights rather than bedside tables with lamps. A bedside table you can actually put a book on is better than one carrying a lamp.
And one myth worth retiring: painting a small room white does not make it bigger. It makes it a small white room. A deeper, warmer colour with the woodwork painted to match often makes the corners disappear, which does more for the sense of space than brightness ever has.
The thing all four have in common
None of these are decorating problems. They are planning problems, and they are solved with a tape measure and a drawing before anything is bought. That is the least glamorous part of my job and the part that saves the most money.
If one of these sounds like a room in your house, tell me about it. The first call is free and it is twenty minutes.
