Interior Designer Shares Storage Hack to Skip in Little House

  • Insider spoke to designer and HGTV star Carmeon Hamilton about decorating modest spaces.
  • She claimed baskets can actually waste square footage when compared to other storage hacks.
  • Hamilton developed a very small room for design and style and purpose at Apartment Therapy’s Small/Awesome NYC showcase.

1 of your go-to storage hacks could be wrong for your tiny area, in accordance to an skilled.

Insider attended Apartment Therapy’s “Tiny/Great NYC” showcase on Thursday. The in-human being occasion highlights how rooms with confined square footage can really feel just as welcoming and cozy as bigger areas by 12 serious rooms curated by renowned designers.

Insider spoke to 1 designer who participated in the event, Carmeon Hamilton, a Memphis-based mostly designer and HGTV star, about how to make the most of storage in a compact space.

A woman in a maroon chair sits in a bedroom.

Carmeon Hamilton in the 120-square-foot space she built for Condominium Therapy’s Tiny/Interesting NYC showcase.

Tory Williams courtesy of Condominium Therapy


If you might be trying to improve storage and place, Hamilton recommends skipping attractive baskets.

“Baskets are good, but if you have a million baskets distribute across your ground, they can be cumbersome and that is square footage you are missing,” Hamilton stated.

For instance, if you have a few baskets on your living space ground for blankets, publications, and online games, you may possibly be wasting space that could be used for more functional parts like a sofa or armoire.

“Even however you’re trying to organize in your baskets, if they are all unfold out everywhere you go, you’re dropping your square footage that you could be employing,” Hamilton included.

Rather, Hamilton endorses going vertical with storage, as it will cost-free up flooring area for you to beautify with a lot more useful parts of furnishings. 

A living room with a side table with baskets in it.

Baskets that are not wasting house can be practical.

Lilas Gh/Getty Pictures


“Utilizing wall cabinets or developed-in units or wardrobes, and however make the most of a basket inside of all those items to corral your products,” she proposed.

Hamilton also endorses considering creatively about what can be storage space.

“Any place that has a flat area, think of a way to integrate storage into it,” she claimed, pointing to the bedroom house she designed for Little/Interesting as an example.

“The nightstands have equally open and closed, concealed storage. So you have the open shelf and then the drawers,” she said, building them multi-purposeful.

A bedroom with dark walls, a bed, a nightsand, a smaller table, and two chairs.

A Compact/Awesome NYC home made by Carmeon Hamilton.


Ricky Snyder for Condominium Therapy



Hamilton also designed the most of the space by hanging lights over the nightstands relatively than employing classic table lamps.

“You totally free up the floor space for ornamental items or additional storage, so your lights are actually unobtrusive,” she mentioned of the innovative lights.

Hamilton endorses beneath-bed storage, and thinking vertically when it will come to more storage space. 

“If I desired far more storage, instead of going with a shorter nightstand, I would make these wardrobes,” she explained, all over again pointing to her Tiny/Great area. “That way you can transform them into a locker scenario as an alternative of just a nightstand.”

The Compact/Amazing showcase will run from April 22 to May 15.