Drive more space at home without having to sacrifice wall space

Drive more space at home without having to sacrifice wall space

You can personalise many methods from your coffee to your vehicle to suit your needs, so why should your house be any different? Open-plan living offers one approach to changing your space but there are several other solutions for reconfiguring your home that could be less drastic. Make your home feel more spacious, cover away clutter and give yourself extra room for the things you like the most - all without sacrificing walls.

Available up a staircase

Image obstructions, for example a chunky wooden staircase, can make your home feel dark and cramped, particularly if your hallway's small. Instead, think about swapping it for a glass-sided design. Not only will this allow extra light to reflect and be refracted, making the area feel brighter, they'll give the illusion more space. Made using laminated or toughened glass solar panels that can be constant or framed with real wood or metal (often with wooden steps), you can even add recessed light for light-time illumination. An experienced professional staircase designer or father will help you choose a design in range with the rest of your home.

Install a specific porch

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Image source: Anglian Home Improvements

Whilst some properties have space for an utility or boot room, what to do with the sensible but space-hogging aspects of our homes can be tricky. Built onto the front or side of a house, an encapsulated porch is an inexpensive mini extension that can solve your clutter problems. Porches are generally a simple composition of dwarf walls, house windows and an exterior door but you can include lighting and power electrical sockets to make them more functional. Small projects normally come under permitted development but look into the Planning Portal or with your local authorities first. Good uses for a porch include dangling coats, umbrellas and shoes, storing wood for a stove inside or as a home for a condensing tumbler dryer (though insulate the porch well as some won't work below 5C). A local builder should be able to advise you on what's possible.

Examine more: create more space without moving house

Convert a cellar

Image source: London Basement

Unless if you're a wine collector, chances are your cellar or basement could be put to much better use than a general store-all junk room. While loft space conversions usually conclude as bedrooms, converting the space below your floor creates the likelihood of an additional room for almost anything you like (and could cost around the same for a simple loft space conversion), from a free time activity and composing area to a research or location for a home business. Cellar and basement conversions are also perfect as playrooms or utility rooms. As long as you're not switching the floor height to create more headroom, most likely unlikely to require planning agreement and a conversion can be finished in simply a few weeks. Do more research at

Add an orangery or sunroom

Graphic source: Amiga

Built using less glass and more brickwork compared to a conservatory, orangeries and sunrooms have better scope for year-round use. Sunrooms are likely to look more like a traditional expansion with a solid roofing and enormous areas of glazing at either part. An orangery usually has a partially glazed roof top with a roof lantern and the sides either built of brick with doors and windows within them or some totally glazed walls. The reduced amount of glass means that these additions are more comfortable to spend time in during very sunny days, too. They're both good for using as a second living room, family room or for dining, yet unlike an open-plan extension, can have glass doors separating them from the key part of the house, giving you extra space only when you need it.