Living Area
You might have a cabinet in your kitchen that would be more functional if you could leave the doors open without them interfering too much with the surrounding space. If you have a walk-in pantry, it’s nice if you can leave the doors open while you are cooking so that you can easily walk in and out of the pantry without having to open and close a door each time. Or, maybe you don’t have space for a separate laundry in your home and need to incorporate some space for your washing machine and dryer in your kitchen. You don’t want to have these appliances on show but they need to be easily accessed. Consider putting them in a cabinet that has either pocket doors that open and then slide away on either side of the cabinet or bi-folding doors that open back together against an adjacent wall or cabinet. Both options will allow you to leave the cabinet doors open while you are using the appliances, and can be hidden away when you are finished. No one would even know they are there.
Even when you’ve done your best to maximise your home’s storage potential, there will still inevitably be a few gaps here and there. Don’t let them go to waste! Do another walk-through and keep an eye out for small, unused gaps that could be filled with a bit of shelving; a tall, narrow opening beside the washer and dryer, for instance, or that space on either side of the kitchen door.
In an open-plan space with few walls to work with, it may seem counterintuitive to give up an entire wall for storage, but it can be well worth it. In the space shown here, the homeowners could have gone with a small buffet that took up three-quarters of the wall, offering very little storage. Instead, the wall-sized cabinets they installed can hold everything from dishes and bedding to pantry goods.
Unify house and garden. It’s all about making connections in small outdoor spaces so that house and garden read as one large area. In this Sydney garden the house opens up to a timber deck with the same timber also used further into the garden. When the doors are open, the area becomes one lovely big space. Tropical plants around the edges give this garden a resort vibe, the lushness of the planting balanced by the small patch of simple emerald green lawn.
Wall decos
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