Jennifer Sheahan: Space-saving ideas and picks for tiny homes
Murphy bed with desk from Wall Beds.
As the proud owner of a tiny cottage, maximising space is as much a necessity as a passion and in that quest, I've become something of a magpie for multi-use furniture. How we use the rooms in our homes can change depending on our needs at the time, and so in a small space, it is helpful to have furniture that can adapt.
This fusion of function is becoming increasingly important as our homes get smaller and property prices continue to rise.
Many of us simply don't have the luxury of dedicating an entire room to a single purpose anymore. We need our living spaces to multitask just as much as we do — we need furniture that works twice as hard as it should. Fortunately, furniture designers and fitters are responding to this challenge with increasingly clever solutions to help us.
Here are some of the coolest and most innovative pieces of transforming multi-use furniture to inspire you. Some of the price tags are not for the faint-hearted, but consider the amount of time and design expertise that goes into these clever designs.
Garden furniture is a tricky one in Ireland. Having somewhere comfortable to lie out and soak up the sunshine is fantastic — but what about the other 355 days of the year? Those of us who are challenged for storage space need something that will fold away small, and regardless, it’s best to bring any soft furnishings indoors to prevent the damp and dust from getting to them.
Enter Campeggi. Italian manufacturer Campeggi is one of the most innovative companies out there when it comes to designing transforming furniture.
Its Brando chair is a thing of genius — a beautifully designed full-length outdoor lounge chair which accordion-folds into a small and stylish pouffe that can be used as a stool or footrest throughout the rest of the year. Its creator, Giuseppe Arezzi, designed the Brando to be lightweight so that it is easy to fold up and carry inside after a long, lazy day lounging in the garden.
When designing small homes, one of the trickiest pieces to work in can often be the dining table. We want to be prepared to host friends and family, but we often can’t afford to sacrifice floorspace for a large table that will only be fully used occasionally.
Extendable dining tables are great, but you may need your large dining table to be in a different space from your smaller everyday table, and so just expanding your existing table doesn’t always work.
That’s where Goliath comes in. Designed by American company Resource Furniture, which has been creating clever transforming furniture for the past 20 years, Goliath is a sleek sideboard that extends out to a twelve-seater dining table.
Its sideboard form allows greater flexibility for positioning it when not in use, though its one drawback is that you need to store the leaves somewhere.
Knock-offs of the extending sideboard design exist that address this issue — for instance, the extendable sideboard dining table from homary.com.
Murphy beds are not new, but have come a long way in the past few years. Murphy beds of old had a reputation for being clunky and uncomfortable, but innovative design has evolved them into multi-functional and stylish items of furniture that serve our modern lifestyles. Murphy beds are a fantastic alternative to sofa-beds in rooms where sofas are just not needed.
Many of us now use our bedrooms as home offices or workspaces, and rather than sofas, we need shelves and desks. Newer Murphy beds now come with hinged desks and shelving, creating the perfect workspace by day and allowing you to easily pull down the bed without even having to remove items from the shelves at night.
They are as comfortable as regular beds, with full mattresses and slatted frames, and can be oriented length-ways or width-ways to suit your room. There are even bunk beds available — ideal for children’s rooms or holiday homes.
Off-the-shelf pieces of furniture are great and all, but if you can find a good cabinet-maker or joiner who’s willing to get creative with you, then the world is your oyster. One of my favourite pieces of furniture in my home is my transforming desk. My spare room needs to function as a home office, a guest room, and a hobby space.
One of my lifelong hobbies is playing the piano (not well, despite how long I’ve been hammering away at it) and squeezing a piano into this little cottage was no easy task.
I had to get creative. I commissioned a custom desk from Borien Studio, which functions as a desk to work and also houses a full-sized keyboard.
It's made with a hinged lid that hides a keyboard underneath, so when I'm finished working, I can close the laptop, open the lid, and the room is transformed from office to music room. The dual function of that desk frees up enough floor space for a sofa-bed (another great piece of transforming furniture), allowing the room to be used as a guest room when visitors stay over.
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