Smaller home sizes are transforming the furniture market, driving demand for versatile pieces with multiple functions. Today, renters and homeowners often have much less space for items, so their furniture collections must be compact. The best furniture for small spaces is frequently multipurpose, serving different needs depending on the day.
Types of Space-Saving Furniture
What is multifunctional furniture? Depending on whom you ask, it’s a broad category that often holds a different meaning. At Home Zone, we generally break down multifunctional furniture into two distinct groups:
1. Multipurpose Furniture
The first type refers to furniture you could use for different purposes, even if it wasn’t designed that way. Imagine an upholstered dining chair with armrests as a makeshift desk chair for work-from-home days. The good thing about this group is that you can eventually retract its multipurpose status as your space and furniture collection grow.
2. Transformable Furniture
The second type is convertible furniture specifically designed to have a dual purpose. For example, a foldaway bed in a student dorm can become a small desk. These transformable furniture pieces range from relatively simple to incredibly sophisticated, but they all have one thing in common: moving parts. If it has hinges, drawer slides, or detachable pieces, it’s considered transformable furniture.
The Benefits of Buying Convertible Furniture for Small Spaces
Trying to decorate small spaces with furniture designed for large rooms hardly ever works. You’ll often end up in a crowded, dark room with little space for walking and moving around. However, small furniture is not always the answer.
Sometimes, you just need fewer pieces, regardless of size. You can quickly reduce the number of furniture items by investing in multipurpose or convertible. We also recommend multifunctional furniture for small spaces for four reasons:
- It makes your space look less cluttered.
- It allows you to expand your furniture collection slowly and mindfully.
- Often, it costs less to invest in one multipurpose piece.
- Once you move out of the small apartment, your furniture will still be useful.
Multifunctional Furniture by Room
Buying versatile furniture is just one of the many ways to increase storage space in your home. Here are our top multipurpose furniture choices for a small living room, dining room, bedroom, and home office.
Living Room
In older homes, you might have found separate living rooms for formal entertaining and casual family gatherings. Today, however, these rooms have largely merged, and many of us have “great rooms” for doing everything from eating breakfast to watching TV. In this type of home, space-saving furniture is a must. Our top choices include nesting side tables, sofa beds, and multipurpose ottomans.