Today many pages of specialised magazines dazzle with design offers intended for multimeter and multiroom apartments and private residences. Yes, really, there is an area where an artist, designer and architect can use imagination. There is a lawful question: how to equip environment of vital space for small apartments?

What is one-room apartment in a standard house constructed on a standard project? It consists of a small hall (3-4 sq.), kitchens (7 sq.), combined bathroom (2,3 sq.) and a living room (18-20 sq.). On such area it is difficult to create modern comfort and provide any “liberties”.

And still vital practice, and also simple designs of universal furniture allow studio owners creating cosiness and reasonable conveniences thanks to which a small apartment seems of big sizes.

For premises of limited sizes it is desirable to use light soft tone which visually “do not press” on a person, and on the contrary move apart premise walls conditionally. Today building market abounds with most different building and finishing materials which can be applied at repair or apartment or house reconstruction.

Vestibule

Probably, it is necessary to remind readers that the theatre begins with a hanger, and apartment from a hall. Therefore convenience of a small entrance hall becomes a card of your dwelling. Naturally, a question is how to create functionally convenient and attractive hall on furnish arises from a small premise. In a hall which is an original sluice between street and a living room, a person changes clothes, removes outer clothing and dresses home one.

For clothes storage you need hangers, small case, mirror, convenient illumination and good covering of walls, which can be washed and cleared easily of stains and a dust.

For these purposes there are various finishing materials, wall-paper under painting, various wall panels etc. Beautiful material invoice, various colour spectrum make walls of a hall not only beautiful, but also practical. The limited area forces to use wall equipment (a hanger, a case, a curbstone) of minimum dimensions.

The most simple and laconic variant is a hanger from two horizontal boards-laths strengthened directly on a wall. Top serves for placing of hooks, bottom as though protects a wall from clothes. Between them, to the left or to the right, the mirror cut out entirely this size or made of separate squares, which can be pasted on a uniform basis or directly on a wall by means of glue or mastic for ceramic tiles. P-shaped framework strengthened on the bottom lath-board under a mirror, and the floor support intended for umbrellas - a flat box or a stool, together with a framework supplement a design. If necessary, instead of a framework you can use a small shelf - for gloves or phone.

Plancks and framework are made of a board in the thickness of 20 mm and width 150 mm: the length of basic elements will depend on a place taken away for a hanger, however the best variant - 1500 mm. Height of a drop of the top lath - approximately at level of eyes, that is about 1600-1700 mm from a floor; distance between laths - about 800 mm. If there are children in a family, for their clothes hooks can be established on the bottom lath.

Kitchen

In one-room apartment a kitchen bears considerable functional loading on itself. It is not only a place for cooking, but also a premise for its reception. Therefore from how furniture and equipment placing is thought, convenience and cosiness of the “warmest” place of your dwelling depend.

In domestic practice a single-row working front is most extended. Considering technology of processing of a foodstuff, equipment arrangement begin with a choice of a place for a refrigerator.

Further establish a working table-case where the ware and products, a sink, gas or electric plate take places. If sizes of kitchen allow, sink can be separated by a table with capacity for storage of washing-up liquids and so forth. Considering growth of a person, his ergonomic possibilities, height of a working surface makes 85 sm from a floor, distance from it to the bottom part of the wall cases intended for ware and products, - 40-50 sm, distance from a floor to top - no more than 210 sm.

Individual character of kitchen interior in many respects is defined by organisation of placing of furniture in a lunch zone. Creation of a cosiness of internal space is influenced also by character and furnish of the equipment entering into a working zone. Last years release and sale of various types of kitchen furniture and equipment of domestic and foreign manufacture has considerably increased.

A kitchen corner, allowing to create cosiness and elementary comfort in small space became the most popular furniture recently. The design of seats, located at an angle, provides capacities for storage of economic things.

Last years great attention is given to a colour score of internal space of kitchen. Soft quiet colour scale of walls can be combined with sated colour of a surface of equipment successfully.

For example, if external furnish of cases, sinks, plate and refrigerator has white colour walls, the floor and other furniture can have quiet light grey furnish. In that case when equipment walls have bright furnish, for a surface of furniture, floor and walls try to pick up light and white tone.

By the way, the ceiling should not be white necessarily, it can be colour, in tone of wall-paper or little lighter. It is good to use shades of same colour or combine contrast colours. That part of a wall which adjoin a plate, sink, kitchen table, is usually revetted with a ceramic tile - from a working plane of tables to hinged kitchen cases. Colour of a tile can coincide with colour of walls, but also can contrast with it. As to a floor, the best material for it - a tile of light tone, monophonic or with small speckled drawing.

Pendant ceilings are not excluded in modern kitchens, they can be punched with fixtures. Curtains, fixtures, decorative elements also should decorate premise. Standart of kitchen equipment “is softened” at the expense of curtains sewed from cotton or linen fabrics. Their colour and drawing depend on general colour of a premise. If colour of walls and kitchen furniture is sustained in one key, it is possible to use a fabric with accurate decorative drawing, if walls and furniture are motley or brightly painted, kitchen will look cosy due to reserved, soft curtains. This rule extends also on cloth and towels.

Living room

The main attention at arrangement of one-room apartment should be given to a living room, which incurs functions not only of a bedroom and drawing room, but also a study. The furniture and the equipment should be universal. It will allow not to block up apartment space.

One of variants - built in cases which, as a rule, are mounted in a room end face. Naturally, there is a question: where a table, chairs and bed should be placed? Where it is possible to sit down, to have a rest? But here, a plane separates from a case - there is a table; lateral shutters open and you have chairs. So a living room can be transformed into a study for employment or, on the contrary, you can release a floor for games of a child. How to make it? First of all, mount universal case-wall, in which it is possible to hide furniture and equipment.

A case should be calculated on four or five separate sections in which two beds, a dining table, book shelves and so forth could be”hidden”. Place for clothes and personal things is also situated here. Case design allows using old section furniture, wardrobes and separate boards. Bars, adjoining walls, ceiling and floor are fastened on cramps rigidly. Forward panels of all branches are made of plywood in the thickness of 10 mm with additional edges of rigidity.

Basic area of a vertical wall is occupied with a folding bed. The main element of a bed demanding special carefulness of manufacturing from executors, is a design of a hinge. Bed is connected to ball-bearings with a rack or a board of a case by hinges. For simplification of lifting and bed lowering a counterbalance from metal plates, attached to a short back of a bed (in a headboard), is established. Two folding boards serve as its legs. When they fall to vertical position, they become a support, and when bed is removed in a case, they take place in the bottom, forming a single whole with it .

It is possible also to use other design of a bed - with spring shock-absorber. It slowly lowers a bed in horizontal position. Its design consists of a pipe, in which spring with core attached to its end moves.

There is also other decision of a folding bed. The bed case is attached to lateral walls through long side. In this case the area of a floor, occupied with a double bed, decreases.

In the afternoon, when bed is removed, a living room turns to a drawing room. Furniture boards, which at chuck turn to a dining table, are attached to external surfaces of a case (to the bed bottom).

Two legs, which are put forward from a plane of a case wall, serve as support. It is possible to store usual or folding-chairs in extreme cupboard sections.

Workplace for employment is also hidden in a cupboard wall. It is arranged on one of internal door surfaces. Table board is attached on metal loops. The table is fixed by special consoles. The size of a table can be increased if necessary in 2 times. For this purpose it is necessary to cast away the second board to the left and fix its second console.

Universal combine-case design is the simplest. A sofa is fixed between two vertical wooden support. Racks are connected by a horizontal shelf among themselves. Plywood or hardboard sheets are attached to them from behind: they also stiffen stability of design.

Lockers for storage of writing-books, textbooks and other school accessories are provided in the top part. Steel bolts with nuts are used for connection of a mattress frame and racks. In the cast away position a sofa leans on two legs. Their stability is provided also with the fact that top part of a rotary leg enters into a groove of a lateral board of a mattress frame.

Working surface of a folding table is made from ribwoods or smooth boards, covered with plastic, connected in boards and fixed. In horizontal position a table-top is supported by two rotary metal arms.

The following variant - a case-secretary transformed to a bed. Its distinctive feature consists that a longitudinal wall of a bed serves as a table at its horizontal position.

Hinges are bolts with nuts or round probe, which a metal cylinder strengthened in a lateral wall of a case is put on. Bed fixation in the lifted position occurs to the help of the folding metal latch leaving a groove of a wall. On a lateral bed surface a metal overlay is attached for this purpose.

In the first and second variants a case should be fixed to a wall by means of metal hooks or laths-loops. External furnish of a case surface should be identical on colour and invoice. It is desirable to process basic racks and external parts of a bed with an emery paper, and then cover with a furniture varnish. Thanks to such universal equipment, you can put not only an armchair in a room, but also a small sofa without serious consequences.

You can save an area in apartment, using sliding doors. Doors-accordions can be mounted not only in a living room, but also kitchen.

Similar “secrets” of universal built in equipment can be used not only in living rooms, but also other premises of small apartments.