Firms are sizing up the market for small domiciles and sizing down accordingly.
WASHINGTON — One of the big trends in today’s furniture is small.
Sofas are shorter and chairs are armless. Console tables that fit snugly in hallways or behind couches open up to seat eight for dinner. Beds are being shown with headboards but no footboards, or resting atop storage units. Major furniture chains are promoting lines with names such as Small Spaces and Loft 21 to catch the latest home-decor wave.
“We absolutely, positively have scale-sensitive furniture,” says Dixon Bartlett, senior vice president of Atlanta-based Storehouse, which last week launched a collection designed specifically “with smaller spaces in mind. Even in the suburbs, there is always that extra small room.”
And what’s not getting smaller is getting more versatile: pieces designed to work as a kitchen island or a desk; wine storage units that open into buffets; ottomans, which already double as cocktail tables when closed, flip open to reveal a mattress for sleeping or empty space for storage.
Small can mean the vestibule of a Washington condo too tiny for his sofa to pass all the way through, says graphic designer David Hazelton. “The movers finally pulled it out. We ended up taking it back to a friend’s house, and I practically had an auction on the porch.”
In the past year, the home furnishings industry has responded to those in tight quarters, be they young urban pioneers or downsizing suburbanites, says Cheminne Taylor-Smith, editor in chief of InFurniture, a monthly magazine that tracks industry trends.
“Baby boomers are almost all becoming empty-nesters, and they look around and say, ‘Who needs this space? Who will clean it?’ Not only do they have too much furniture, but it’s too big to move,” Taylor-Smith says.
Savvy manufacturers are shrinking sofas, tables, chairs and chests in several styles, she says.
The small-is-hot trend “is not coming at the expense of grand furnishings,” she notes. “You still have people who want gigantic homes with luxury. Century Furniture last year showed an 18-seater dining table plus a condo line.”
That is because “American homes are getting bigger and smaller at the same time. What’s going away are the houses in the middle,” says Ed Tashjian, marketing vice president for high-end Century in Hickory, N.C.
The company’s maiden CII condo-size collection, which appeared in stores last spring, features 20 scaled-down upholstered pieces, including three sofa styles. To Tashjian, a small couch is 80 inches long and seats three. Standard size is 100 to 110 inches and also seats three.
Jackie Hirschhaut is spokeswoman for the American Home Furnishings Alliance in High Point, N.C. “There really is no official barometer that a sofa needs to be a specific number of inches wide to be considered small, medium or large,” she says. “In a small space, a loveseat can double as a sofa, and McMansion size can be 100 inches.”
Century’s best-selling small piece, says Tashjian, is not a sofa at all, but a swivel rocking chair.
“It screams condo. You end up having a smaller space: The dining room and the living room come together without a wall between them. So instead of having two sofas flanking a fireplace, you have four swivel chairs and a large coffee table. The primary reason is to have a conversation pit; the secondary reason is to be able to swivel toward the flat-screen TV.”
Crate & Barrel carries small pieces because so many of its stores are in space-starved urban areas, says spokesman Joe Dance. The staffs often advise shoppers that large floor models can be ordered a foot or two shorter, and that versatility is key to space-saving.
In July, Pier 1 Imports introduced its Loft 21 collection, which is multipurpose as well as sleek, says spokeswoman Misty Otto. The Project Desk, for example, “has cubby holes on the end for CDs or whatever little tchotchkes need to be out of the way. But it can also be used as a kitchen island with storage.”
Last year, Pottery Barn launched Small Spaces, inspired by the success of West Elm, its sister retailer known for scaled-down, urban-contempo design. There is even a “furniture for small spaces” prompt on its Web site.
“A great deal of Pottery Barn customers live in these small apartments, and they need simple things to accommodate narrow stairwells and tight corners,” says spokeswoman Leigh Oshirak. “They don’t have the luxury of a separate home office, so they need an office in a bedroom nook, a dining table that seats four.”
Since storage is always an issue, Pottery Barn’s Stratton platform bed comes in two models: six alcoves of open storage with fitted baskets or a pricier model with drawers.
But not all potential customers are aware of the chain’s slimmer offerings.
“Pottery Barn doesn’t appeal to me because the pieces are gigantic,” says congressional staffer Edward Jones, who lives in an 800-square-foot Arlington, Va., apartment. Last week he hit the furniture stores.
“You kind of get tired of eating off a plate in your lap,” he says, but he worries that even a small table might dwarf his dining area. And a table with a removable leaf would not work. “Where would I put the leaf?”
It took Hazelton (he of the sofa that would not fit through the vestibule) years to furnish his 640-square-foot condo.
“I had trouble finding things I liked,” he says. “I bought a small interim couch. It wasn’t really what I wanted, but I knew it would fit and I lived with it for four years. . . . . Now I have a bistro table with two chairs, which doubles as an office when I pull out the laptop.”
Those in tiny quarters can trick the eye by using glass-top tables to expose more floor and putting sofas on slender wooden or metal legs so they look less massive.
Sometimes, vintage pieces work better than new ones, says Lindsay Bierman, executive editor of Cottage Living magazine. “A lot of the mid-century modern furniture is well-suited for the small home.”
