How to make the most of your home's small space and make it more beautiful and comfortable

How to make the most of your home's small space and make it more beautiful and comfortable

Between high costs, small space, aesthetics and entertainment at home
-Small land and high construction costs have reduced the size of the house and rooms and sacrificed the comfort and well-being of its inhabitants
-You can exploit the roof of the house to be your entertainment center
-Creating a basement for guests or entertainment is a suitable solution to the lack of space on the first floor
-Do not sacrifice the beauty of the exterior of your home, there are economical solutions
-Teach your children to share spaces and separate them with decorations and accessories
Open design is best suited for small spaces

<Last week, I wandered through the newly built neighborhoods of North Riyadh, and I was intrigued by the exterior and the size of the building in relation to the size of the land. It is no secret to many that the high prices of land and building materials combined with the constant or declining income of the Saudi individual has led to the small size of residential land so that you can find plots of land that do not exceed 230 square meters. All of the above has affected the thinking and behavior of those wishing to build and own so that the comfort and convenience of the house has been sacrificed as well as the external aesthetic form.
In this week's Amlak newspaper, we will discuss this phenomenon and offer you some practical solutions. <Overbuilding
The small size of the purchased land led its owner to try to inflate the size of the buildings to the largest degree possible to be part of his internal living, ignoring the luxuries of his life and the aesthetic and recreational aspect of his life. This is why you find many newly built small houses lacking space in the outer wall or having enough space to park a car inside the wall or having a garden or an outdoor swimming pool.

The solution to this situation. <The solution in this case is to think about the roof of the house and make it the outlet of the house by creating a garden, a room for games or others. Also, the space of the fence can be exploited when wanting to have an extension to the house in addition to the need for the driver's room by making these extensions vertical on top of each other. Also, the use of glass facades and increasing the size of the windows gives a feeling of spaciousness and extension to the outside. It is also possible to establish a basement for the house and use it to receive guests instead of the first floor to ensure more spaciousness in the living spaces, and adopting an open design for these spaces gives a sense of space and spaciousness and ensures the optimal use of all parts of the house.

Vertical extension
We also note that there is a group of homeowners who had to think economically in building their house to enable them and their children to extend and expand or to find a simple opportunity for investment and rental to help them pay off the land and construction loans, which made them extend their construction to the third floor (the roof of the house), so you find that the percentage of construction exceeded 60% or more. This also limits the possibility of utilizing the roof as an outlet or a place for rest and recreation by making it a garden, a game room, or a sports room.
The suggested solutions in this case are the same as those mentioned in inflating the building, the most important of which is to make the solution in the lower vertical extension by establishing a basement for the house and making it an outlet for well-being and recreation or receiving guests in it and making the first floor completely dedicated to living.

Exterior Shape
It is obvious that the exterior of the building is affected by the economic conditions that many people live in. It is noticeable that the external facades of newly built houses are simple and lack the luxury of glass, stone and marble facades and are limited to one color of paint.
An economical and inexpensive solution is to use two contrasting colors of paint. Also, a limited number of stone, brick or marble can be used to define the windows and create a simplified aesthetic. The exterior aesthetic should also be considered in the house plans. A plan with exterior geometric shapes can be adopted to give the house an elegant look.

Smaller room sizes

Small room sizes
It is obvious that the small land area leads to a small area of rooms, as the owner tries to maximize the size of the rooms under the narrow space. The most appropriate solution in this case is to adopt the open system for the first floor because it is one of the most suitable designs for small spaces. You can also merge used rooms with each other, such as merging the living room with the dining room and deleting unused rooms, such as having a women's room and a men's room. For bedrooms, closets can be designed to be built into the wall to provide more space in the rooms. Also, bedrooms can be divided with decorations, accessories, and lights to contain two people instead of one person in each room. Smaller furniture and the use of transparent accessories is more appropriate.

Bathrooms and Basics
Although these rooms are small, they are still under the microscope for downsizing to create more space in living rooms. Outdoor sinks can be eliminated and just an indoor sink for the restroom. The elimination of a bathtub or shower in basement restrooms has become a truism. The bathtub can be eliminated in the second floor restrooms and the shower can be eliminated. The number of restrooms can be reduced to two in the basement and share one restroom with two rooms on the second floor. The basics such as a shower, sink, and siphon are the obvious economies of scale.

Kitchen Between Expansion and Necessity
The kitchen is the foundation of the home and is a place to store a lot of supplies and materials often, so the need to have enough space to design it. But the reality of small land size and spaces has reduced the size of the kitchen.
There are some suggested solutions to make the kitchen more functional, such as making it open to the living room and using an island that separates the two spaces and serves as a place for storage and seating for eating at the same time. Also, making the upper storage cabinets extend to the ceiling is a practical solution to ensure optimal storage. Integrating appliances such as the refrigerator, oven, and microwave with the kitchen cabinets saves space and gives an aesthetically pleasing look to the kitchen.

<Utilize what you have
The small size of rooms or houses is not an excuse to sacrifice comfort and beauty, there are many aesthetic and decorative methods that give the building and the house a beauty and a look of luxury. It is also important to sacrifice the customs of Saudi society in building and placing unused rooms and try to adopt what is more practical and comfortable for the homeowner residing in the house and not thinking about the comfort and suitability of the design for the guest who comes once a month.

The small size of rooms or houses is not an excuse to sacrifice comfort and beauty.