Home tour | A small but stylish attic apartment in Gothenburg

The subject of today’s home tour is a tiny attic apartment in the Swedish city of Gothenburg. It’s only 34sqm in size, but it’s a great example of how clever design tricks can turn even the smallest of spaces into stylish and practical places to live.

The apartment is nestled beneath the eaves on the top floor of a period building and has lots of sloping ceilings and exposed beams. They can be very tricky to deal with, creating awkward-to-furnish nooks, but here they’ve been incorporated into the scheme brilliantly. The designer has made a feature of the rafters by painting them black, setting up a contrast with the soft greige walls and forming the basis for a sophisticated, airy colour palette that’s carried throughout. What’s more, the layout has been carefully considered to ensure that every centimetre of space is used efficiently.

In the open-plan living room, lighting and rugs create different zones for dining and lounging. The sofa is tucked cosily beneath the lowest section of ceiling, but it’s been pulled out from the wall just enough to guard against bumped heads. A long bench and a collection of prints (among them ‘Portrait M’ by Gurilla and ‘Figure 02’ from Bycdesign Studio) sit opposite, forming a focal point in the absence of a hearth or fireplace. There’s also a versatile stool (IKEA’s ‘FROSTA’) that can be used as a side table for the sofa or as extra seating around the dining table, plus a handy storage alcove accessed via a ladder that can be hung flat against the wall when not in use.

The kitchen is squeezed into the far corner of the room, but bespoke open shelving has been installed to add as much storage as possible. I love the way the extractor fan has been incorporated into the shelves, and the way both it and the units have been painted the same colour as the wall to ensure they blend into the space rather than dominating it. The appliances have also been arranged so that items requiring more headroom (the fridge, oven etc) sit on the higher side of the room, while the dishwasher is in the lower part as it can be opened and stacked from the side.

In the bedroom, built-in wardrobes maximise storage, while the black wall-mounted clothes rail provides a place to hang things that need to be kept close at hand without eating into valuable floor space. On the higher side of the room, the bedside lamp is suspended from the ceiling, avoiding the need for a chunky nightstand that would get in the way of opening the wardrobe doors. On the other side, a bench provides a surface for books, ceramics and a table lamp (the ‘Formakami’ design by Jaime Hayon for &tradition) and makes use of an area that’s too cramped for anything else.

All in all, a very inviting and well-designed home! And if you’d like to see more solutions for small-space living, take a look at this recent post.

Photography by Alen Cordic for Bjurfors; styling by Emma Fischer