Jennifer Sheahan: A versatile spare room is key to tiny house living 

There is a quiet genius to Japanese interiors and their calm versatility of their tatami mats, clear floors, sliding doors, and low-profile furniture. 

Of all the countries in the world, Japan has sat at the top of my list of places I want to visit the longest. Partly because I am an avid skier and the powder is legendary; partly because I love Japanese food and could happily eat it all day, every day, indefinitely; but mostly because Japanese interior design is one of my favourite styles to draw inspiration from when designing for small spaces.

There is a quiet genius to Japanese interiors and their calm versatility. One room can serve as a living area, a dining space, or a bedroom, depending on the time of day. It is deeply practical and immensely satisfying.

Here in the western hemisphere, we can’t seem to help filling our rooms with unnecessary clutter, but maybe we should take inspiration from the Japanese and adopt a pared-back approach that would afford us much greater flexibility.

Versatile layouts

The key to creating a flexible room is keeping the floor as clear as possible. When the floor is open and unobstructed, furniture can shift, activities can change, and a single room can serve multiple functions without feeling cramped.

The Japanese approach to interiors treats space as something fluid, not fixed. This sounds almost insultingly simple, but it’s harder than it sounds. We love putting things in rooms. An empty room is echoey and strange and begging to be filled, so designing for a clear floor must be intentional and considered.

Flooring should be comfortable and inviting, textures should be soft and layered, and materials should be natural and warm.

To create even greater flexibility, you can incorporate movable boundaries rather than permanent partition walls.

Sliding or folding doors, pocket doors, or even lightweight screens allow you to divide a room when privacy is needed and open it back up when it’s not.

Futon on the floor of a Japanese room, which can be easily rolled up and stored away in a guest bedroom.

Curtains are another clever option — they soften the look of a space and can visually separate zones without sacrificing light or airflow. The aim is to create transitions, not walls, so the room feels flexible and generous, no matter its size.

Flexible furniture

Having a clear floor is a good start, but the crucial next step is to have furniture that can be moved around easily. Even better if it is multifunctional.

We’re no strangers to multi-functional furniture in Ireland, with sofa beds and storage ottomans in most homes, but Japanese interior design takes this principle to another level. They tend to favour lightweight, low-profile furniture that can be moved or rearranged in seconds.

In a small Irish home, the same approach can make a spare room feel infinitely larger. A Murphy bed with a desk on its underside is my longtime favourite solution — during the day you have an office, and by evening you simply fold it down for sleeping, with no need to dismantle your workspace.

In Japanese homes, it’s not uncommon to sleep on futons that are rolled up and put away during the day. While few of us in Ireland are ready to swap our mattresses for roll-up futons, the spirit behind them can be easily adopted: Furniture that disappears when not in use. The lesson is to look beyond the norm to items that move easily, fold away, or serve more than one purpose.

Hidden storage

I’m not a minimalist — I like a lived-in home — but too much clutter stresses me out. My approach here is in line with the Japanese: Built-in storage, invisible storage, and maximising vertical space. 

This approach makes a room feel calm and ordered without losing character. Having multiple storage spaces dotted around a room is also a much more effective solution than one big room or a press rammed full of stuff that’s hard to access. 

Hidden storage in dual-purpose furniture keeps things calm and organised, says Jennifer Sheahan who has an ottoman in her living area at her home in Rathmines. Picture: Moya Nolan

A place for everything and everything in its place is the mindset to adopt when designing storage into a room.

Consider built-in window seats with hidden compartments underneath, or modular furniture that conceals storage inside. In a small house where space is precious, this kind of design is transformative. Out of sight, out of mind, but still within reach.

Zoned lighting

Lighting is one of the most powerful tools in any interior designer’s arsenal, and in a multipurpose space, a clever lighting plan can transform the room’s mood and function instantly. Japanese interior design uses zoned lighting intentionally to change the purpose of a space at the flick of a switch.

Instead of relying on a single fixture, always layer your lighting: Task lights for reading or working, warm ambient lamps for winding down, and dim accent lights to highlight art or design features. Having dimmer switches is always a good idea for additional flexibility.

If you don’t want to rip up your walls chasing wires to rearrange your lighting, the good news is that you don’t have to — smart bulbs and rechargeable lamps make this easy. You can adjust brightness and colour temperature without rewiring or adding sockets.

Small rechargeable lamps have come a long way recently, offering light where it’s needed without cluttering up surfaces with cords. Lighting is the quickest way to shift the atmosphere of a room — one space can glow softly for a dinner one evening and then shine bright for a work session the next morning.

On the floor

Now, this is one design principle that probably won’t take off in Irish homes anytime soon, but it’s still worth exploring. 

Traditional Japanese interiors are often centred around tatami mats — woven straw flooring that invites you to sit, sleep, and live close to the ground. This, of course, provides a huge amount of flexibility as couches and chairs are replaced with cushions and futons, which are much easier to move around or store away when not in use.

While we’re unlikely to trade our sofas for cushions, the concept of floor-level living can still inspire us. Low furniture — coffee tables, pouffes, and floor cushions — creates a sense of casual openness. 

Even something as simple as swapping bulky dining chairs for a lightweight bench, or adding a soft floor cushion to a reading nook, can capture a touch of that grounded, unfussy comfort. Though I would like to be there when you invite Auntie Mary to sit down to dinner on a cushion on the floor.