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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Big ideas for small spaces


 Mark Borowski uses a small loft for storage and a place for an air mattress for guests, in his Philadelphia apartment.
 (Philadephia Inquirer / The Spokesman-Review)
By Diane Goldsmith Knight Ridder Newspapers

PHILADELPHIA — When you walk into William Whiting’s elegant trinity in Center City Philadelphia, you’re immediately transported to an ancient world. One wall of his living room is covered with an expansive mural of the Bay of Naples (before Vesuvius erupted), done up in trompe l’oeil and faux-painted marble. There are details of an Egyptian crypt in his bedroom, and the hanging gardens of Babylon adorn the walls of his third-floor studio.

The detail is so absorbing that it’s easy to forget that the three-story home measures a mere 590 square feet — total — from bottom to top. “It creates an illusion of space that the mind plays along with,” Whiting, a scenic artist, says of the elaborate effects he’s created over the years.

Apartments of 350 to 750 square feet account for about 10 percent to 15 percent of Philadelphia’s apartment stock, according to David Glancey, chairman of the city’s Board of Revision of Taxes, and they don’t necessarily come cheap. Demand is so high for housing in Center City that “if you can get a 500-square-foot apartment for $750 to $1,000, you’re lucky,” Glancey says.

Anyone lucky enough to score one of these micropads soon learns that smart design for a small space is as much about fooling the eye as it is about making room for everything that matters. But the rules are often counterintuitive.

Whatever you do, don’t assume you should paint the walls white, says Christopher Lowell, who dispenses decorating advice on the Discovery Home Channel and is the author of “Christopher Lowell’s You Can Do It! Small Spaces: Decorating to Make Every Inch Count” (Clarkson Potter, $29.95).

Instead, Lowell urges the use of rich but muted shades that can serve as a backdrop for furnishings. “The eye goes to what’s in the room, not its size,” he says.

That’s the case in Whiting’s living room, where the walls – even those including added finishes and other painting – have a dusty-rose base. The darker color “pushes the boundaries back,” says Whiting, 54, “and blurs the sense of how small the room really is.”

An astute use of color also creates a bit of visual magic in the kitchen and dining room of Robin and Kevin Towey’s 750-square-foot condo in West Philly.

The rooms had once been painted a tepid lavender, and the floors were covered with worn linoleum. Now, the principal walls are dove gray, which makes the new white cabinetry and appliances pop. A red tile backsplash provides a focal point in the kitchen, while a red wall does the same for the dining room. Gray wood flooring throughout ties the two rooms together, making them seem more expansive.

Meticulous planning also created more space – real and perceived – in the diminutive kitchen, which measures 7-feet-by-9 3/4 -feet. To extend the storage space, the Toweys removed the original soffits and installed cabinets that extend to the ceiling. New corner cabinets reclaim dead space over and under the counter. The microwave was installed above the range, freeing up counter space.

“The white cabinetry going all the way to the ceiling makes our kitchen feel wider,” says Robin, 30, an interior designer with Michael Shannon Designs.

The couple’s renovation plans also included some strategic purchases.

They opted for new appliances in less-expensive white, rather than trendier stainless or black, but splurged on eye-catching extras such as brushed-metal hardware and a stylish Grohe faucet, complementing overhead kitchen fixtures with under-cabinet lighting. In all, they paid $14,000 for the renovation, including the cost of their contractor.

Whether your budget is large or small, the principles of good design are the same, says architect Dennis Wedlick, author of “Designing the Good Home” (HarperCollins, $50). Wedlick still lives in the 800-square-foot house in New York’s Hudson Valley that he designed for himself and his life partner at the start of his career.

“It’s important to think of layers,” Wedlick says. Simple touches, such as adding a picture rail around a room, can make the ceiling seem higher. “The eye rests there and then looks up to the ceiling,” he explains.

“Or you can do one wall with another color or texture. Your eye goes to that, and when it takes in the rest, the room feels larger,” Wedlick says.

Mark Borowski, 28, has made the most of the 14-foot ceilings in his little Rittenhouse, Pa., rental, just blocks away from Hillier Architecture, where he works as an architect.

“I thought it was small, but not so small that it wasn’t manageable,” he says, recalling his first impression of the 380-square-foot apartment (448 if you include the 4-foot-high storage loft overhead).

“The ceilings sold me,” Borowski says. “They added a lot of volume to what is a small footprint.”

In the living room, he makes use of that height with 8-foot-tall bookcases and framed photographs stacked up the wall. Pin-striped silk window treatments more than halfway up the windows also accent the room’s height while making it feel more manageable. A loft bed with a home office underneath in the bedroom is another use of the vertical space.

Borowski didn’t make the typical mistake of buying tiny furniture for his undersize apartment. That would have made it look like “the land of the Lilliputians,” small-space guru Lowell says.

Instead, he chose moderate-size pieces, such as a black leather bench that can double as a coffee table, as well as a trim armchair and ottoman. A brushed aluminum bistro table with stools can either perch in the kitchen or be moved to the living room.

“I can do a little cocktail party for four or five, but no sit-down dinners,” he says. In all, he spent about $5,000, buying many things at Ikea.

Much as he might like to, Borowski can’t push out the walls of his 37-square-foot kitchen. But he’s not complaining. He likes being able to walk to work and having easy access to the city’s nightlife.

“I would have loved to have something bigger and could have found it for less, but not in this area,” he says.

Finding the right furniture has challenged Whiting, too. He’s handled it by constructing some simple pieces himself.

When all the sofas he considered for the living room proved too deep, Whiting decided instead to build a shallow settee out of a trash-picked coffee table. He brought it to an upholsterer, who covered the seat cushion in the same fabric as the smaller back cushions Whiting hung from a drapery rod on the wall.

Clever touches elsewhere include putting the TV inside his bedroom closet, which he’s painted to evoke a view of the Nile.

How could he spare the space? By transforming a teensy second bedroom (only 7-feet-by-8 feet) into a walk-in closet, freeing up his own closet for other uses.

Even the television has a theatrical front. “I’ve made it look like a Punch and Judy theater,” he says, lifting the cover. “I just hate to look at an empty screen.”