7 Small Spaces That Showcase Major Style in Less Than 500 Square Feet (2024)

As housing costs rise across the globe, both renters and homeowners are learning to do more with less. In spaces that measure at less than 500 square feet, modular furniture, built-ins, and thoughtful DIY projects are among the many tricks in the small-space-dweller’s tool belt, though each individual home does indeed take a unique approach in order to be fully maximized. Below we take a peek into some of the smallest spaces—all less than 500 square feet—featured on Clever, from a blood-red Paris spot to an art-filled space in New York’s Chelsea Arts District.

300 square feet in Downtown New York

Serendipity led architect Vincent Appel and homeowner Kitty Jacobs to each other. While Vincent, founder of the firm Of Possible, was designing a house in Massachusetts, he brought his clients to the Splendid Peasant, Kitty’s home gallery. “After the death of my husband, Martin Jacobs, I shuttered our nationally known, museum-quality American folk art gallery, the Splendid Peasant, sold our modernist house in the Berkshires, and moved to our pied-à-terre on lower Fifth Avenue,” Kitty says.

In addition to the small one-bedroom apartment she already had, Kitty was looking for an additional space in the same historic Beaux Arts building. “The 311-square-foot space was on the market as a ‘package’ with an adjacent two-bedroom unit,” she says. “The owner finally agreed to entertain an offer on the studio alone. Originally, I thought having separate spaces would be awkward, but it’s not true. For me, there is a change of scene, room to spread out, and privacy from overnight guests.” —Karine Monié

495 square feet in L.A.’s Echo Park

As unlikely as it sounds, it was a Craigslist posting plus a FaceTime with a friend that sealed the deal for Sam Klemick, founder of Otherside Objects, in finding her new apartment in Los Angeles. A Miami native living in New York City, she had decided to move back to L.A. and made the bold choice to send a deposit on an apartment sight unseen from across the country.

But then again, what she was looking for was quite unusual: “I wanted the high ceilings and large windows of a loft space, but with garden access, and for it to not be in a huge industrial building,” Sam says. She admits that it was a tall order, so when her friend scoped out a former studio in the backyard of a 1962 home and saw the studio’s potential, they knew it was the one.

The building was originally meant to be an art studio for the wife of the homeowner in the Echo Park neighborhood of L.A., and it showed. In fact, Sam was the first person to use the space as a residence, and it was very raw when she moved in. “The floor was concrete, and there was not one bit of storage space,” she says. “It had fluorescent lights and no finish moldings—it was a blank slate with infinite potential.”

Sam’s first step toward achieving that infinite potential was to build the lofted bed with help from a few handy friends. In order to reach the loft, they constructed a set of stairs that doubled as storage. Sam was determined that the main space would be used as a living room for having friends over, with a small portion to be used as a workspace. Once the loft was completed and the general organization of the 495-square-foot apartment figured out, Sam had a friend make a custom bookshelf to house all of her art—“these are all pieces I have collected over the years from friends,” she says. —Kate Reggev

400 square feet in NYC’s Lower East Side

Like most people with internet access, Corey Kingston is obsessed with scrolling through the real estate listings on Zillow. The New York–based architect could argue that this hobby doubles as valuable market research for Le Whit, the design studio she founded with Liza Curtiss, but its most fruitful reward was the discovery of a Lower East Side apartment she could actually afford.

The 400-square-foot residence popped up on Corey’s screen during a heat wave, so she quickly put in an offer while the city was a ghost town. It was accepted thanks to the lack of competition and her instant connection with the seller, who was giving up the place to enroll in a Philadelphia architecture school. They bonded over an appreciation for the early 20th-century building’s history as a tenement and then a squatter property. —Morgan Goldberg

269 square feet in an Italian mountain village

The Italians are experts in la dolce vita: They have mastered the art of enjoying life and spending time with family and friends. This philosophy generally pervades the Mediterranean culture, and it’s certainly one of the reasons why Stefano Carera and Eirini Giannakopoulou are great partners, both in life and business. The couple launched their Turin-based architecture studio in 2011. Since then, they’ve designed spaces that always reflect the balance between functionality and emotion, tradition and innovation. For them, a project has to be like a poem, saying the most with as few words as possible. This essential concept does not translate into a specific aesthetic, but, rather, it is like the relationship between technique and imagination. Case in point: Stefano and Eirini’s tiny holiday home located in a small village in the Alta Val di Susa, Claviere.

“It is on the ski slopes, just one hour from Turin,” Eirini says. “It is a very lively area in every season.” The 269 square feet of outdoor space overlooking the woods are what made the couple fall in love with this place. “We have a five-year-old kid who really has fun playing outside!”

The two architects purchased the flat a few years ago and, since then, have renovated everything inside. The biggest challenge consisted of “interpreting the traditional image of a chalet in the mountains, usually all made of wood.” Instead of sticking to that particular ideal, Eirini and Stefano created a colorful 323-square-foot refuge with an open space comprised of the kitchen and dining/living area, a tiny bedroom, and a bath. —Karine Monié

250 square feet in Uptown Manhattan

At the end of 2019, Armando Aguirre had just broken up with his boyfriend, and as those things go, he needed a new place to live—fast. “I was scrambling to find an apartment, and then I came across this one,” Armando says. “It’s funny, I’ve lived in the Upper West Side for a while, but I was always running around to different parts of the city. I figured that, if I stayed in the area, I could actually acquaint myself with it.”

The apartment had all the makings of an address-only necessity that would otherwise encourage him to stay away. After all, this was about convenience, not comfort. “It was tiny. Ok, it was super tiny,” he says and laughs. “The apartment was 250 square feet. But the day after I saw it, I called up to check if it was still available. It was, and I decided to move in.” —Kelly Dawson

344 square feet in Paris’s 10th arrondissem*nt

“Since my childhood, I’ve been passionate about textures and colors,” interior designer Hugo Toro says. “My double culture with a French father and a Mexican mother, and my studies between Europe and the United States, are my main sources of inspiration. I like cozy places. I don’t want to live or create spaces that look and feel like museums.”

The young creative reflected these references and philosophy in his apartment, which is located in the lively and booming 10th arrondissem*nt in the east of Paris. “It is a neighborhood in transformation, which is full of life, with coffee shops and young people all over,” Hugo says.

Located on the second floor of a three-story 1930s building, the 334-square-foot apartment was completely transformed. “I wanted to create an atypical and eclectic place, as if it were a travel diary,” the designer says. —Karine Monié

394 square feet in Manhattan’s Chelsea Arts District

Walking into Erica Boginsky’s 394-square-foot Chelsea studio apartment is transportive in the way that walking into an art gallery can be. Which makes sense; Erica is the director of sales at Chelsea’s preeminent contemporary design gallery, Friedman Benda. And her home is a gallery you can live in: Upon entrance, you’ll see a painting by Daniel Aron (“This is actually his own language that he depicted”), a bright blue bag from Fendi’s Eyes collection, and a wood Kaws sculpture.

Erica found the place by chance, or perhaps by fate; a few years ago, she’d already put in the deposit for a different apartment, when she walked by the prewar building she now resides in. “I thought that it was kind of quaint and cute,” she says. “It didn’t seem too big. And I walked in and I asked them, which is not usually how it’s done.” —Katja Vujić