Tiny Person, Tiny Room: Homes With Clever Solutions to Fitting in a Nursery

Written by

Nancy Mitchell
Nancy Mitchell
As a former Senior Writer at Apartment Therapy, Nancy split her time among looking at beautiful pictures, writing about design, and photographing stylish apartments in and around NYC.
updated Jul 10, 2021
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After: Nursery tucked in corner of master bedroom
Credit: Ella Hall

If only the universe were a little more accommodating, every time you added a new person to your family, a new room would magically be added to your abode. Alas, it is not so. But the good news is that, for a while at least, tiny people do not take up very much space, so in the same way that you can morph part of a living room into a home office or a closet into a (grown-up) bedroom, you can carve out a spot for your little one. (Their stuff can take up a ton of space, but that’s a completely different story.) 

If you’re racking your brains about where to fit your new addition in your current home, check out the ingenious ways the real-life small space dwellers below squeezed a nursery into hardly any space at all. 

Credit: Ella Hall

A Shared Bedroom

Ella and Brandon created a mini nursery in their Brooklyn bedroom for baby. They use an office filing cabinet for baby clothes and installed open shelves for toiletries, toys, and teethers.

Credit: Neda Bajwa

Baby in the Living Room

Neda and Amir’s baby actually sleeps in the living room thanks to a nursery corner they created. It flows with the rest of their apartment’s mid-century/Moroccan style.

Credit: Anna

A Closet Repurposed

Believe it or not, this nursery is found in a main bedroom’s walk-in closet. Anna and her husband purchased wardrobes to house their clothing in instead and kept everything in their nursery closet light and bright.

(Image credit: Stories)
(Image credit: Stories)

A Closet Sans the Doors

Sarah Sherman Samuel designed this very sweet little nursery that also tucks into a closet (after the doors were removed for safety). If your apartment is short on bedrooms, but not on closets, this is an option to consider.

(Image credit: Mother Mag)
(Image credit: Mother Mag)

Closet With a Window

Stylist Laura Hollabaugh created a nursery for her daughter Isla in what was once a long, narrow walk-in closet.

(Image credit: Crystal Palecek)

Walk-In Closet Redesign

Designer Crystal Palecek converted an (admittedly quite large) walk-in closet in her San Francisco home into a nursery for her son.

(Image credit: Mother Mag)

Loft Bed Solution

We tend to think of loft beds as the stuff of college dorms, but San Francisco residents Erin and Danny made use of a loft bed in their apartment’s tiny bedroom to make room for a baby below.

(Image credit: Visual Vocabularie)

Nursery Wall

Jesyka from Visual Vocabularie added a changing pad to the top of a dresser and tucked a petite crib next to it to create a “nursery wall” in the master bedroom.

(Image credit: Thoughts from Alice)

Baby in the Corner

OK, maybe you can put baby in the corner. It does help if you have a bassinet as pretty as this one, spotted on Thoughts from Alice. All you really need for baby is a small footprint — and a willingness to fit everything in.

Additional reporting by Carolin Lehmann