6 Creative DIY Renovation Ideas for Small Spaces

Everyone wants a home with that ideal balance of spaciousness and warmth, but this can be hard to achieve in small spaces.

Sure, it’s easy enough to make them feel cosy, but this often comes at the cost of constantly tripping over the furniture. So how can we create more space without pushing the walls out?

Creative DIY Renovation Ideas

Well, it’s actually surprisingly easy. Interior designers do it all the time, so in this article, we’re digging into their bag of tricks and revealing six high-impact changes you can make to make more of small spaces in your home.

1. Hidden Storage Bench

Overfurnishing is the root cause of many rooms feeling small. All too often, we buy two pieces of furniture when one would do.

For example, we need seating and storage, so we buy a chair and a cupboard, then wonder why we have no space. Yet many pieces of furniture can do both jobs at once, and one that never looks out of place is the hidden storage bench.

You can find these in all kinds of colours and patterns to suit your taste, and they fit perfectly in entryways, living rooms, and at the ends of beds, providing a comfy seat and keeping clutter out of sight.

2. Upgrade Doors to Save Space

Nothing makes a small room feel depressingly small like a large swinging door that opens into it. This immediately draws attention to the lack of space and means a large part of the floor must be kept clear at all times.

Fortunately, there are plenty of other options available that look just as good without taking up much space at all. Simply swapping out a hinged door for a sliding one already creates the effect of a much larger space.

Opting for glass lets in light, which can add to the bright, spacious feel of the room, but other styles, such as rustic wooden sliders, are also popular.

3. Refresh Your Floors

Floors are often overlooked when it comes to DIY renovations, but they’re actually very important for reflecting light. They can also be used to add visual interest in small spaces or direct the eye to certain areas.

Modern options like light coloured herringbone LVT flooring do all of these things at once. The light luxury vinyl has a stunning reflective sheen, while the herringbone pattern is a classic that provides visual interest without overwhelming your eyes.

The pattern can also be used to elongate a room and draw the eye towards tidy, spacious areas and away from cluttered ones.

4. Add Vertical Garden Features

When we think about furnishing a room, we almost always think about the lower half of the room. Then we wonder why we run out of space so quickly.

By ignoring the upper half of the room, we’re neglecting around half the available space. A great way to make use of this space is by installing a vertical garden.

Getting some green into your space helps create a calmer atmosphere and helps oxygenate the room. And you can easily make a DIY vertical garden frame from a palette, wooden planks, or a piece of chain-linked fence.

You’ll need to think about sunlight and drainage, but once those are covered, this is one of the easiest ways to brighten up your space.

5. Accent Your Ceiling

Like the floor, the impact the ceiling has on a room isn’t usually something we think about. But switch to an accent ceiling and you’ll notice the difference immediately.

What do we mean by an accent ceiling? One that draws the eyes through things like an interesting choice of colour or texture, or a focal point like a pendant light or chandelier.

Accent ceilings have the advantage of drawing your eyes upwards and creating the illusion of space overhead. You’ve probably noticed the impact ceiling height can have when you’ve stepped inside a grand hall or cathedral.

6. Build a Window Seat with Storage

We mentioned earlier how benches with storage can be great space-savers in small rooms, but what if you could add seating and storage without taking up any additional space at all?

Window alcoves are perfect places to add storage, and they can be built right into your existing wall.

Popular ways to do this include having the seat lift up to reveal the storage space, or building drawers into the wall below the seat.

Storage Renovation Ideas

If you thought small rooms were fated to feel cluttered and suffocating, then hopefully now you’ll think again. These creative tricks can help any room feel larger at relatively low effort, making them ideal for your next DIY renovation project.

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I also use Artificial Intelligence Image generators to create some of my images. These are to show you examples of my ideas and inspiration when I cannot produce the real images myself.