Small space decorating can be a challenge. When you live in a small residence, you begin to think more creatively about home decor. It’s easy to feel frustrated with the lack of space for all your furniture, belongings, and decorative items. All you need is a strategy to organize, display and decorate your small home.

In your quest to turn your apartment or small house into a home, you should experiment with ideas on how to maximize functionality in your rooms, searching for efficient ways to organize your space.

5 Small Space Decorating Ideas to Try Now!

With that in mind, here are 10 ways to create a sense of spaciousness despite your tiny space and make your home a joy to live in rather than a pain to endure until you can upgrade the size of your paycheck and move to a bigger place. Take a look at these small space decorating ideas to try:

1. Small bedroom Ideas: tension rods can divide a space

Small bedrooms can be cozy and inviting if decorating right! Tension rods work well in spaces that are from two feet to twelve feet wide. They make it easy to use room dividers, curtains, drapes, sheers, and valances. They can be used to cover up windows without curtain rods that force you to look straight into your neighbor’s facing windows. Other small bedroom ideas mean they can be used to create partitions in closets and to separate storage space from the rest of a room. And they can be used for shared bedrooms and multi-purpose rooms. These 20 small bedroom design ideas from Elle Decor has us swooning.

2. Make small playrooms more playful with small space decorating tips:

When creating a playroom, try to imagine the room through the eyes of your child. What can you do to make the room into their sanctuary? Look for colorful sturdy, functional furniture that makes your child feel happy. Children tend to be rough on furniture, so find furniture that can take some pounding with toys. Keep furniture to a minimum to give your child plenty of space to play. Also think about storage bins for their clothes, books, and toys.

3. Small room design tip: Repurpose bookcases!

Chances are you have many electronic books on your mobile device and may not even need bookcases, but you can also think of bookcases as multipurpose storage spaces. You can use bookcases to store all your miscellaneous things in one place so that you can spot them right away. For instance, in the bedroom, you can use a bookcase to store your sheets, comforters, duvet covers, quilts, coverlets, blankets and throws. Need help arranging your shelves? Here’s 22 bookshelf decorating ideas for your small space.

4. Use your small kitchen space more efficiently

Here are three ways to get the most out of limited space and make your kitchen more functional:

• Improvise a pantry. Use a shelving system with breathable baskets to store bulk items like sugar,  grains, and flour.
• Get a retro-look. Modern day appliances have been designed to be big and spacious. One way to get smaller appliances is to choose a retro-look for your appliances. For instance, a SMEG refrigerator is less than two feet wide!
• Install a wall-mounted shelf. This allows you to put things you need when you cook within reach. Also, add hooks to hang kitchen tools, pot holders, and towels. You can also add hooks to the inside doors of kitchen cabinets.

Take a look at these kitchen essentials that will make life easier in your small kitchen.

5. Small decorating ideas: Use illusion to create space:

Although the following ideas are all optical illusions, they work very well:

• Mirrors. Enlarge your small  room! Add more mirrors to your rooms to create the illusion of much more space. This mirror article on About.com gives clever ways to use mirrors to enalrge interiors.
• Paints. Paint the walls in all the rooms with neutral colors to create a sense of continuity from one room to the next.
• Decluttering. Keep things neat and clean because for some strange reason, dirt and clutter can make a room seem smaller.
• Drapes. Hanging your drapes closer to the ceiling rather than to the top of the window creates the illusion of larger walls.
• Laundry room: If you’re using a front-loading washer and dryer, put a shelf above it and a folding dry rack to the side of your machines.
• Dining room: Consider installing built in seating to reduce the spaces that chairs take. These seats will also allow you to put storage underneath them.

These 5 ideas are only a small sample of possible ideas. The notion of using a small space well has become a popular concept among designers. So, if you start looking for ideas from blog posts and home décor magazines, as well as visiting furniture stores where they provide model rooms, you will quickly become really good at making the most out of your small space.

For more home decor tips on Stagetecture look at these small deecorating ideas tips, here.