Is Skinny the New Tiny? This Super-Slim $1.4M Brownstone Fits Into a ‘Growing’ Trend

With urban real estate by the foot at an ever-increasing premium, building or renovating “gap houses” — super-slim buildings designed to fit into the narrow egress between two more historic structures — are a growing trend around the globe, like this $1.4 million townhouse in London that’s only 91 inches wide.

Despite the fact that it’s only a little over 7 and a half feet wide — or “narrower than a Tube car” says the London press — the three-story townhouse is amazingly livable; it includes over 1,000 square feet inside plus a 48-foot-long courtyard and top-floor balcony for outdoor space. The curb appeal can’t be beat, either, with white-washed stucco, a black door, and bright red geranium-filled window boxes.

Called “Slim House,” the Clapham property (Southwest London) is surprisingly full of natural light thanks to several skylights, with loads of space-maximizing features that have landed it on several UK shelter documentaries, according to the listing agents.

On the ground floor, there are two reception rooms separated by a staircase, the front room full of beautiful built-in shelving and storage solutions and the back room featuring an eat-in kitchen/dining room that leads out to that stunning but slender 48-foot-long garden. Upstairs, there are four double bedrooms (including one with a walk-in closet), two bathrooms (a “fantastic family bathroom” and “stylish shower room”) plus a loft space, according to the listing.

Part of an ever-growing trend to conserve or create this type of sustainable and sophisticated urban housing, Slim House joins architect-designed gap houses with narrow footprints like this ultra-modern gap house in Westminster done in 2007 by Pitman Tozer Architects and this dreamy, pine-clad “timber house” in Kobe, Japan featured recently in Dezeen.

Curbed also covered London’s narrowest house in 2014, and a whole list of the “slimmest, how-do-they-fit houses in the world” back in 2011.