Multifunctional Furniture You Need In Your Home

GUIDES · SMALL SPACE LIVING

Rooms that do two jobs need furniture that does too. Here is what to look for, room by room.

Very few homes have a room for everything any more. The spare room is also the office. The living room is where guests sleep. The kitchen table is where homework happens and where eight people sit down at Christmas. When every room has to earn its keep, the furniture in it has to as well. That is what multifunctional furniture is for: pieces designed from the start to do more than one thing, so a small home can live like a bigger one.

It matters more in Britain than almost anywhere. New-build homes here are among the smallest in Europe, and our Living Space Premium Index shows just how much people in our cities pay for every square metre. If floor space is the most expensive thing you own, furniture that wastes it is a luxury most of us cannot afford.

What is multifunctional furniture?

Multifunctional furniture is any piece designed to serve two or more purposes without you having to compromise on either. The key word is designed. A sofa you happen to sleep on is not multifunctional; it is a sofa you sleep badly on. A proper sofa bed is built as a sofa and a bed from the ground up, with a real mattress and a mechanism that makes the change in seconds.

The best examples do their second job in the space the first job already takes up. A storage bed is a bed that happens to hold as much as a large wardrobe underneath. A storage sofa keeps the throws, games and remote controls inside the base rather than on the cushions. A convertible table spends most of its life as a slim console or a low coffee table and becomes a dining table when you need one. None of them takes up more room than the single-purpose version. They simply refuse to waste the room they are given.

Our favourite multifunctional furniture pieces for every home

Furl has only ever made furniture that does more than one job. We started with a storage bed because we could not find one that was well built and worth looking at, and everything since has followed the same rule: if a piece cannot earn its floor space twice over, we do not make it. Nearly twenty years of that has taught us which pieces make the biggest difference in real homes, and which ones are just clever for the sake of it. Here is what we would put in each room.

Multifunctional bedroom furniture

The bedroom is where multifunctional furniture pays back fastest, because the bed is the largest single object in the house and, in most homes, the largest single waste of space.

Storage beds

A storage bed lifts the whole mattress on gas struts to reveal the full footprint of the bed underneath, up to 40cm deep on our Max. That is enough for suitcases, spare bedding, out-of-season clothes and the things that would otherwise need a wardrobe or a trip to the loft. In a small bedroom it can be the difference between fitting a chest of drawers and not. Our Max gives the most storage of any bed we make; the Air sits on legs for a lighter, more modern look; the Illusion is our electric ottoman for anyone who would rather press a button than lift; and the wooden storage beds suit a more traditional room. All of them are made to order in our Nottingham workshop.

Bedside tables

The humble bedside table is the easiest place to add a second function. Choose one with drawers rather than an open shelf and it becomes discreet storage for everything that ends up next to the bed. A taller version with a drawer and a cupboard can replace a small chest of drawers altogether. The trick is proportion: it should sit level with the top of the mattress and no wider than it needs to be, so it earns its place without crowding the bed.

Console tables and desks

A bedroom often has to double as a workspace, and a full desk rarely fits. A slim console that extends into a proper table gives you a dressing table or a shelf for most of the week and a desk when you need one; our Slim Extending Console is barely 45cm deep against the wall and pulls out to seat far more than you would expect. For the smallest rooms, a wall-mounted fold-down desk like the Little Home Office disappears completely when the working day is over.

Multifunctional living room furniture

The living room is where most of us entertain, relax, work and, increasingly, put guests up. Three pieces do most of the work.

Sofa beds

A good sofa bed is a proper sofa first, with deep cushions you would choose anyway, and a proper bed second, with a real pocket-sprung or foam mattress rather than a thin fold-out pad. That combination is what lets a one-bedroom flat host for a weekend without anyone dreading the sofa. The Metro is our most popular everyday sofa bed; the Cocoon is the one to choose if you sit on it every evening; the Tokyo suits a more contemporary room; and the Classic does what its name suggests. All of them convert in under a minute, with the bedding stored inside.

Storage sofas

Most sofas are beautiful for about a week, until life moves in: throws, cushions, the children's things, three remote controls. A storage sofa keeps all of it inside the base, so the room looks the way it did on day one. Our Mellow storage sofa lifts the seat on struts to reveal a deep, lined compartment the full length of the sofa, and it is the same sofa you would choose for comfort alone.

Coffee tables

A coffee table that rises to dining height and extends to seat six is the piece that lets a living room become a dining room. The Pivot, Rise and Loft all do this in different finishes, from natural oak to lacquered glass, and the Plane starts lower than most for a sofa that sits close to the floor.

Making your office furniture work harder

The home office is the room that most often has to be something else as well, usually a guest room. The mistake is to furnish it as an office and then squeeze a bed in. Do it the other way round: furnish it as a room that works, then make each piece do the office job too.

• Swap the sofa for a sofa bed. A two-seater sofa bed gives you somewhere to sit and read during the week and a proper double bed for guests, in the same footprint.
• Swap the desk for a console. An extending console against the wall is a 45cm-deep shelf until you pull it out, and a full desk or dining table when you do. When guests arrive, it goes back to being a shelf.
• Try a wall-mounted desk. For the tightest rooms, a fold-down desk uses no floor space at all when it is closed. Our Little Home Office folds flat to the wall with the laptop and paperwork still inside.

There is more on choosing a desk that fits, and where to put it, in our guide to the perfect small desk for your bedroom.

Designing a multifunctional kitchen

When people think of multifunctional kitchen furniture, they usually stop at the extending dining table. It is a good place to start, but it is not the only option, and which piece is right depends on the shape of the room.

• Extending dining tables suit a kitchen or dining room with a fixed spot for the table. Sit six every day, then flip the leaves for a full table. The Big Round seats six, eight or ten and is kinder to a square room; the 4x4 goes from six to twelve.
• Transforming console tables are the answer when there is no room for a table at all. Against the wall they are a slim console; pulled out, the Golia goes from 43cm to 293cm in about ten seconds. Ideal for a galley kitchen or a hallway that opens onto the kitchen.
• Clever coffee tables are made for open-plan living, where the kitchen, dining and sitting areas share one space. A coffee table that rises and extends means you never need a separate dining table taking up the middle of the room.

What to look for in multifunctional design

The benefits are simple enough: more use from the same floor space, fewer pieces to buy and move, and rooms that stay calm because things have somewhere to go. The catch is that a piece which does two jobs badly is worse than one that does one job well. Four things separate the good from the gimmicky.

• Cohesion with what you already own. A multifunctional piece should look like furniture, not equipment. If it only makes sense when it is transformed, it will look wrong the rest of the time. Choose finishes and proportions that sit naturally with the rest of the room.
• Ease of use. If changing from one function to the other takes two people and ten minutes, you will stop doing it. Look for gas struts, one-hand mechanisms and nothing that needs to be unbolted. Try it in a showroom if you can.
• What you actually need it to do. Be honest about the second function. Guests twice a year need a comfortable sofa that becomes a decent bed. A lodger needs a bed that becomes a decent sofa. The right piece depends on which job comes first.
• Finishes and styles that suit your home. The best multifunctional furniture comes in the same choice of fabrics, woods and sizes as any other good furniture. If the only option is one colour in one size, keep looking. Ours is made to order, so the storage bed can match the bedroom and the sofa bed can match the sofa it sits opposite.

Get those four right and multifunctional furniture stops being a compromise and becomes the reason a small home works. The bed stores. The sofa sleeps. The table grows. Nothing is on show that does not need to be, and every square metre you are paying for is doing something.