Designing for Sanity: A Case for Smaller Spaces

She’s standing in the center of her very open, very reverberant, very Pinterest-circa-2016 living space and whispers, “I think I hate it.”

It’s almost a confession. I hear this tone from our client all the time. They are aware of their blessings and their pretty home and don’t want to appear ungrateful but - well, they just really would like something different. 

For years, clients have been handing me sledgehammer dreams: Take that wall down. Blow this part out. Let’s make the whole thing one big room! The open floor concept has become the holy grail of residential design - kitchen-dining-living all in one breezy, uninterrupted sweep of space.

She’s looking around her house, eyes skimming the ragged dog bed, the half-zipped backpack under the island stool, her husband’s dual-monitor setup glowing in the corner like a spaceship. 

She sighs, “There’s just... nowhere to go.”

I nodded, my own internal empath could feel it too.

“If one area of this room is messy, then the whole room feels messy,” she says. Their house is beautiful. Light-filled. Airy. But it is also loud, a little chaotic, and visually draining. 

She isn’t asking for walls, exactly. She’s asking for boundaries.

—

Over the next few weeks, we worked together to reshape the space - not by knocking things down, but by building things in. We framed out a snug little den off the main living area, just big enough for a couple of reading chairs, a small fireplace, and a door that shuts. An awkward alcove in the back of the house, just off the kitchen, became a pocket office; A smartly designed nook behind twin pocket doors with soft lighting and a view of the backyard. Her husband loves it and she relishes in sliding those doors shut at the end of the work day. A clever new ceiling feature and craftily arranged furniture gives her new kitchen just enough separation to feel like its own room again without leaving her feeling estranged while she’s whipping up dinner.

Every decision was about reclaiming rhythm, about restoring contrast: open and closed, public and private, busy and still.

The kids love the new zones. Probably because it’s easier not to see their mess. The dogs finally have a spot where they aren’t constantly being stepped over. As we walked through the near-finished space, she looked around with this little half-smile and said, “I feel like I can breathe again.”

It struck me how backwards that sounds to the last decade of design intent - more openness, more light, more volume. But sometimes breathing room doesn’t come from expansiveness. Sometimes it comes from structure. From softness. From knowing where one thing ends and another begins.

I think we’re entering a new season of design. One where it’s okay - maybe even beautiful - to want less openness, more quiet, and just enough separation to feel like yourself inside your own home.

—

Harmony is the in-house architectural designer and founder of Creative Concierge, the design department within Creative Building Concepts where she specializes in creating custom residential spaces with timeless character and thoughtful detail. When she’s not sketching floor plans or walking job sites, you’ll find her mentoring and teaching young, aspiring designers through class and application. She lives just outside of Carlisle within a private plot in the woods, among her beloved gardens with her husband, their three kids and two rambunctious border collies.