Southern Living Southern Living Small-Space Ideas 2022

SMALL SPACE TRICK STRIPES Truth is, the timeless motif never went out of style—it’s just chicer than ever THE HUMBLE STRIPE MADE ITS ENTRY into fashionable territory thanks to 19th-century royalty, when Britain’s Queen Victoria dressed her young son in a sailor suit. Then style icon Coco Chanel introduced it in a 1917 collection, birthing a new brand of “nautical chic” that’s remained relevant for more than 100 years. It was only a matter of time before the interior design industry caught on, too, prompting legends like Dorothy Draper to adopt the pattern among her signatures as a wallpaper (a clever trick for a small space that can enhance a room’s height or length). Not long after that, thick, bold stripes graced awnings and beach umbrellas in many Slim Aarons photographs. But despite…

When interior designer Emily Painter first set foot in the Palm Beach, Florida, apartment she now calls home, the exact word that came to her mind was “frightening.” But rentals are hard to come by in this South Florida city, especially along Worth Avenue, the upscale shopping and dining district she was eyeing for her family. So Painter didn’t run away. Instead, she began dreaming. “The walls were brown with mirrors everywhere,” says Painter, who has spent the past five years working as senior designer for Amanda Lindroth and before that was with Margaret Kirkland in Atlanta. “It was the most un-Palm Beach place imaginable. But that meant I had a blank canvas for reviving it.” Painter convinced her husband, Austin, she could erase the drabness and resuscitate the 1,300-square-foot space.…

I had no intention of living in a condo when I first started house hunting,” says Atlanta-based interior designer Anna-Louise Wolfe. But a 1929 Colonial Revival condo in Buckhead caught her eye. Its hardwood floors, original millwork, and old-school glass doorknobs checked off the items on her list. “It had all the historic charm I was looking for,” she says. Twenty years of renters had turned the 810-square-foot, one-bedroom residence into a dirty, dated hangout. “It was a nightmare,” Wolfe recalls. First step: Repaint every inch. Decorating with her favorites—chinoiserie, cherished Rose Medallion porcelain, bold animal prints, and vibrant fabrics—she turned the blank space into an ultrafeminine home. Here, Wolfe shares her favorite small-space decorating ideas. DESIGN A HAPPY ROOM “The sunroom (shown on page 14) is my spot for morning coffee.…

As longtime fans of old homes and small towns, Renee and Charles Bullock always dreamed of owning one of Edenton, North Carolina’s famed Cotton Mill Village houses, which originally were built for workers at the now-closed textile plant. “We loved the neighborhood’s sense of community,” recalls Renee, and after 10 years they lucked into nabbing a foreclosure in 2017. Built in 1916, the cottage used to be a duplex—notice the two front doors—and required lots of work, which the couple took on themselves. Learning as they went, the Bullocks devoted two years’ worth of weekends to grappling with strict budgets of time and money, stringent covenants, and a small footprint. See how they pulled off this fixer-upper. CHARACTER BUILDER The Bullocks made the front of the house structurally sound and enhanced its old-school…

EJ and Whit Brown aren’t afraid of a challenge. The intrepid do-it-yourselfers had recently restored a 5,600-square-foot historic home in Florence, Alabama, when a cabin around the corner went up for sale. “I looked at it and fell in love, but it was not move-in ready. It was a disaster,” says EJ. Tucked away off a back road on a secluded 3-acre property, the 1,400-square-foot cabin had been vacant for several years and was less than livable. However, the home’s atypical-for-Alabama saltbox-style design and woodsy location were worthy of a downsize. “I’m drawn to fixer-uppers,” she says. “If I can see the potential in a house and if we put a lot of sweat equity into it, I know we can make it amazing.” The renovation tag team got to…

Leave it to a designer who spent her childhood summers on concert tour buses to make a dated, cramped space look worthy of a ballad. “Everything on those buses served multiple purposes; the bench became a table that became a bunk,” recalls Nashville-based Hannah Crowell, whose parents are country music stars Rosanne Cash and Rodney Crowell. The decorator brought her years of spatially efficient vagabonding to this particular home, built in the mid-1980s in the vacationland of Seaside, Florida. It would need to welcome a Dallas couple and their three young children, plus occasional visiting grandparents, all within a tidy 600 square feet. Intentionally opting for cramped quarters may seem counterintuitive (or insane), but Crowell says, “The family fell in love with the house’s charm, and it was one of the…