Space-saving interiors ideas: top storage solutions to make the most of small spaces
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From beds in boxes and flip wall desks to slimline kitchen tables and easy to store rockers, everything is shrinking, flexing and folding. Here’s our pick of the new collections:
LIVING ROOMS AND KITCHENS
The budget-friendly House range at John Lewis focuses on versatility with its slim line, soft-edged Anton oak table and desk, stackable Fluent oak chairs and the beautifully compact Arlo sofa, which will fit into the tightest space yet feels generous thanks to its plump seats.
Ikea’s brightly painted metal Lixhult cabinets can be either wall-hung or used as side tables or cabinets. For a foldaway home office, the oak Flip desk is genius: a slim desk that sits right up against the wall on pads to avoid scuff marks and folds away flat. Designed by recent Cass Faculty of Art and Design graduate Tim Summers, it won Heal’s Discovers 2016 competition. Kitchens can suffer badly from cramped space syndrome so invest in Ikea’s Forhoja birch kitchen trolley, which has heaps of storage, a generous work surface and rolls around on castors.
BEDROOMS AND BATHROOMS
In-house Habitat designer Matthew Long’s Copeland four-poster red hollow metal bedframe is light as a feather and its sides double up as extra hanging space — smart, simple and functional.
If you need a mattress in a hurry and don’t have time to try them all out in the shop, consider Simba, one of a new generation of clever dual spring and memory foam, one-size-fits-all mattresses that arrives vacuum- packed in a cardboard box. Order online before 2pm and it arrives next day and will fit through the smallest front door. You’ve got up to 100 nights to decide if you want to keep it and a 10-year guarantee.
To accommodate extra guests in places you didn’t even think you had, Sofa.com’s new pop-up beds in boxes are a brilliant solution. Henry and Hetty act as ottomans by day with cushioned fabric tops and turn into beds with a flip of the lid by night. Choose from 150 house fabrics.
The Lycksele Murbo chair-bed from Ikea is a chair by day and bed by night. Long-time champion of the cheap and cheerful Sainsbury’s has just launched a new Everyday Luxury range — a cut above in terms of design and quality. Try pure white Egyptian cotton bed linen and throws, thick white cotton towels and hang them on the Ragrund towel rack chair, an ingenious two-for-one idea from Ikea.