A young, creative couple found a place in the suburb they love; now they need to make it work for them.

We’re firm believers that it’s not how much space you have, but how well you use it that makes the biggest difference to your day-to-day life. But, when you don't have the luxury of space, assessing the functionality and flow of your home and developing a strategy for how you can make it better suit you and your lifestyle is a crucial investment.

This 2-bedroom, semi-attached unit is the perfect example of the benefits of making a compact home perfectly suit your lifestyle and how it can be achieved, even on a budget.

One of the key moves was actually the most simple to achieve: flipping the main bedroom and the guest bedroom/office space. While it seems counterintuitive to put the main bedroom in the smaller of the two rooms, it made a lot of sense for these clients to utilise the brighter, larger room for their work-from-home space. Why do we tend to dedicate so much space to sleeping? When space is limited, it makes more sense to prioritise the rooms we use during our waking hours. Plus, a smaller, more cosy room is the ideal place to retreat in the evenings.

Other alterations, which will be staged over a period of time as the owners' budget allows, will ultimately create the ideal home for this couple who are planning to stay in their home for at least the next ten years.

Previously, this home had no private outdoor space, but repurposing the car space as a multi-functional outdoor area creates a private outdoor oasis.

Crucially, though, the addition of a new opening and large sliding glass door connects to this new outdoor space. The sliding door and new windows let additional light into the kitchen, meals, and living area, making the home feel much larger by visually and physically extending the space to the boundary.

Expanding and reorienting the kitchen makes it more space efficient and relocating the laundry to a previously wasted hall space makes the most of every square millimetre.

Space-efficient built-in furniture like the retro banquette seat makes the most of limited space because they're designed to fit perfectly in the space. The banquette seat is designed to function as a dining and meals area but is also able to act as additional seating for the lounge area when the owners are entertaining. The seat also incorporates additional storage space underneath because, when it comes to storage space, more is always better.

By understanding how the owners live and their personal priorities, it's possible to create a home that suits their needs now and into the future while dramatically improving their quality of life, even with minimal intervention.