How do I make a box room actually usable?

The third bedroom in a typical UK house is often around 2 by 2.4 metres, which is enough for a single bed and almost nothing else if it is furnished conventionally. The rooms that work are the ones where somebody made a decision about what the room is for and then built to the walls rather than standing furniture in it.

What you'll need

• Tape measure
• Sketch of the room with door swing, window, radiator and any bulkhead
• Masking tape, for marking layouts on the floor

Step by step

1. Measure everything including the obstacles.Wall lengths, the door swing, the window and its sill height, the radiator, and any stairs bulkhead — box rooms above a staircase usually have one, and it takes a corner out of the plan.
2. Choose one primary use and be honest about it.A single bedroom, a home office, a nursery, a dressing room, or storage. The rooms that fail are the ones asked to do three of those. A second use can be secondary — a desk in a bedroom — but not equal.
3. Reverse the door swing if it eats the room.Moving the hinges to the other side, or rehanging the door to open outwards where the landing allows, frees an entire corner. It is a couple of hours' work and it is often the single best change available.
4. Build upwards for a child's room.A cabin or mid-sleeper bed puts the whole bed footprint back into use as a desk, wardrobe or play space. It is the highest-value move in a small child's bedroom, and the frame must be anchored to the wall.
5. Use fitted furniture rather than freestanding.Freestanding units lose space to the gaps at the sides, the skirting at the back and the plinth at the bottom. Fitted units scribed to the walls use every millimetre and can be built over a bulkhead or into a chimney recess.
6. Take the storage to the ceiling.A wardrobe that stops at 2m wastes the space above it. Full-height storage with the rarely-used things at the top is free capacity in a room that has none.
7. Use the wall above the door.A shelf or a cupboard in the 400 to 500mm between the door head and the ceiling is dead space in every other room and useful capacity in this one.
8. Put the desk under the window.It is the one position that gets the light, and it usually needs no more depth than a shelf. A 450 to 600mm deep worktop scribed wall to wall is a better desk than anything freestanding that would fit.
9. Keep one clear sight line from the door.A room where you can see the floor and the far wall from the doorway reads as considerably larger. Keep the area immediately inside the door free even if it costs a little storage.
10. Anchor everything tall.Small rooms force tall narrow furniture and raised beds, which are the shapes that tip. Every one of them gets an anchor into a stud or masonry, fixed to the solid frame.

Tips

• A 750mm single bed rather than a 900mm one gives back 150mm across the room, which is often the difference between a wardrobe fitting and not.
• Sliding or bi-fold wardrobe doors, or open shelving with a blind or curtain across it, remove the 900mm door swing that a box room cannot afford.
• In a box room over the stairs, the bulkhead is usually at the right height to sit a bed head or a low run of drawers against. Design to it rather than around it.

Common mistakes

• Trying to make the room do three jobs — Each use needs its own clearances, and they conflict. One primary use plus a modest secondary one is the most a room this size supports.
• Using standard freestanding furniture — It loses 50 to 100mm at every edge to gaps, skirtings and plinths, which is a large fraction of a small room. Fitted furniture recovers all of it.
• Leaving the space above the door and above the wardrobe empty — It is the only spare capacity a box room has, and it costs nothing but a shelf.
• Filling every wall so there is no clear view into the room — The room becomes oppressive and feels smaller than it is. One clear sight line from the door is worth the storage it costs.

If it doesn't work

Questions people ask