Making the Most Of A Corner

Corners get such a bad reputation as space-wasters -- we say embrace them with these six clever ideas.

Every home has them: The empty corners that could be put to good use -- if only you knew how. It's tricky to furnish and decorate those corners in a way that's both smart and stylish, but it's certainly not impossible. Determined to make the most of the place where two walls meet, your ShelterPop editors looked high and low for inspiring corners. And here's what we found:

One of our all-time favorite interior designers, Kelly Wearstler, shared two corners from her Malibu beach house with us. Instead of treating corners like an afterthought, Wearstler turned these spaces into focal points with unusual pieces of art. In the photograph above at left, Wearstler says she opted for a large sculpture. "It replaces a table and makes a more dramatic statement." In the corner at right, she chose "large art for height, [which] makes space and feels more layered and dramatic." The results are museum-worthy.


Oh Happy Day! blogger and mother of two, Jordan Ferney, has managed to fit her family and her work into a one-bedroom apartment in style. A recent living room redo with the help of decorator Jenny Komenda (of Little Green Notebook), took one of Jordan's corners and turned it into a high-functioning home office.

Ferney transformed a humdrum ALVE corner workstation from IKEA (bought on craigslist for $100) with a coat of Benjamin Moore's Casco Bay paint and new brass hardware. The finished cabinet creates a home office that's hidden in plain site. Says Ferney of the new workspace, "[My husband] and I both spend a lot of time at the computer. It is so nice to be able to close it up when we entertain or when we want to prevent grubby two-year-old hands from getting into all our stuff."


When we reached out to the Twitterverse for corner maximizing ideas, we received another corner office solution: Blogger Kara Kurth has used a corner of her living room to create a mini mid-century-inspired office for her husband. The desk was a roadside find, refinished by her husband and the chair was from IKEA's as-is section. A tall, open, metal bookcase cleverly separates the office from the rest of the room without blocking daylight. And the rest of the furnishings take up little visual space -- a lucite chair practically disappears, while a wire-legged desk and a wire magazine rack are neat and narrow. The end product is a functional area that doesn't cramp the rest of the room's style.



In his book, Organize It!: How to Declutter Every Nook and Cranny in and Outside Your Home (Filipacchi Publishing) Mervyn Kaufman offers several clever ways to make the most of a corner. In a bathroom, a corner cabinet makes maximum use of the space between the sink and the door. While the cabinet shown above at left is a built-in, you can get the look with a ready-made cabinet like the Hampton Bay Corner Linen Cabinet I ($229, Home Decorators Collection), at right.

Another idea from Organize It! takes advantage of a corner in a child's bedroom, where a bed has been built in beneath the house's eaves -- complete with space maximizing under-bed drawers (above). A generously-sized closet fills the remaining space.

In her book Living with Light: Decorating the Scandinavian Way (CICO Books, $12), Gail Abbott shows how an awkward corner can be put to good use without calling in a contractor. Above, a curtained shelf turns a dead corner into handy storage space in an entrance hall. To create a similar curtain, use Berta Rand fabric ($9/yard, IKEA).

What about you? Do you have any clever ideas for making the most of a corner?