How to: make the most of a small room

I recently moved in to a new house with eight of my friends (I know, crazy, but I like company) and after drawing straws to decide who had which of the rooms, I ended drawing the shortest straw there was...

I moved in and my room was/is rather small. It still only had a bed in it with a desk supposedly still left to come. There was no way a desk was going to fit unless I wanted zero floor space so I decided to do without.

Instead of sulking about my matchbox compared to the spacious rooms downstairs, I picked up my heels and decided I just had to make the best of it. There had to be some way of making the room a nice place to be for the rest of my tenancy!

The first place I went for 'bedroom inspiration' (which also drew up some rather dodgy results, presumably for middle aged married couples looking to 'spice' things up) was Instagram of course. But after a few minutes it became apparent that most of the bedrooms in the search results were considerably bigger than mine is. If I couldn't rely on Instagram, I had to get a bit creative myself

A month or so later, here's what it looks like. It's still not exactly how I want it, and definitely not going to inspire much on Insta, but I thought I'd share a few tips for how to make the best of a small room, should you end up with one :-)

Tip number one: Smart storage

Cheap and cheerful plastic boxes available from Ikea, Wilko, Tesco etc.

Under-bed boxes and other mediums of storage now excite me far more than they should. A couple of boxes under your bed to keep toiletries, spare clothes, bed linen and any other odd bits frees up space in your wardrobe, which is pretty vital if you've got too many clothes/shoes like me!

Another investment that completely maximised my wardrobe space was this hanging clothes organiser from Ikea and matching collapsable boxes. Not only do they match my colour scheme, they also mean I can use the bottom shelves of my wardrobe for shoes, and putting my underwear & socks in the boxes instead of my bedside drawer means I've now got space for make up and other essentials.

Unfortunately I've never been one for folding things neatly...!

Sneak peek of my unimpressive underwear drawer - oo er

Tip number two: Choose a colour scheme

Several months ago if you'd said the phrase 'colour scheme' to me, a vision of a bored Stepford Wife agonising over a lampshade that didn't quite match the fuschia and orange bedspread would have sprung to mind. But picking one or two colours and sticking to them makes a small room far more pleasing to the eye than a big one that's paid no attention to the colour and decor. I chose pink and white (as you've probably already guessed), so most of the additions to my room (the laundry basket, bedside table, lamp and flower decoration) are all either white or pink and makes it feel much more unified.

Tip number three: Create a sense of space

The last thing you want in a tiny room is loads of clutter taking up valuable space, so keeping the room as tidy as possible makes it a much nicer to place to be (thank god for smart storage!).
As well as not cluttering the floors, keeping the decoration on the walls and other places to a minimum will makes the room seem much more spacious, especially if the walls are white. I'm quite lucky to be in an attic room with a velux window and lots of light, but I've currently only got one bit of wall decoration up (which I still need to mount, oops!). I've also bought a shelf from Ikea that I'm going to put on the wall nearest my bed when I get around to buying the right screws, which should hopefully make it a little less bare.

Hope you enjoyed this post! All of the furniture and little decorative additions are from Ikea, Wilkinson's or other supermarkets so all totally affordable if you're a student. Let me know if you have any tips yourself for making the most of a small room - I'd love to hear them.

-PB