Hong Kong is almost as notorious for its small homes as it is for its soaring skyscrapers. Inevitably, then, many residents have more stuff than room to stash them in, creating a citywide yearning for creative solutions that utilise any and all available space to the very max. Thankfully, there have been a whole load of innovative ideas on the fashionable, functional but affordable furniture front, with these cleverly-designed transformable furnitures leading the charge…
A transformable coffee table with storage
Genuinely functional, while also stylishly innovative, multi-functional coffee tables that open outward, exposing hidden storage compartments and tops that level out into miniature desks, creates the perfect repository for magazines, chargers, cables, remotes and even board games. Such is the case with the Chiva functional coffee table with storage (HK$13,599) from Danish designer Bo Concept which cleverly integrates a slim table top that creates the perfect height for a working desk or a place to have your afternoon tea.
A hydraulic TV floor-lift
No matter how limited your home-space is, one thing every living room clearly cannot get by without is some form of TV mounting. Though such items are typically bulky, there are number of options for those who want to save a little space. In the case of hydraulic TV cabinets, these can vary considerably in terms of design, ranging from mounted screens that drop down from the ceiling to TV frames that lift from underneath the floor. Hong Kong-based smart home company Linko offers solutions to automating rolling TV cabinets for any position and any room in the home.
An expandable dining table
Adopting a minimalist style gives space saving a stylishly modern and elegant look. But showcasing less doesn’t necessarily have to mean to be without, as there can be more than one way to accommodate a minimalist lifestyle and still entertain a large circle of friends on occasion. US-based furniture brand Expand Furniture is famed for its innovative and modern designs that seamlessly extend small-scale furniture into full-length pieces. Notably their benches and dining tables such as the Ultimate Space Saving Dining Table Set (HK$23,985) which was engineered to expand from a 17″desk to a full 12-seater dining table — ensuring guests can dine and relax together.
A floating shelf desk
Turning to the home office – typically not so much a dedicated study as a co-optible multi-purpose spare room. Floating shelves often make for a great way to optimise your available floor acreage, transformable desks that easily fold in-and-out of the shelving unit makes for an efficient space saving work station that can be dismissed out of sight and out of mind when the task is done. One such example is the Wally (HK$10,368) floating shelf desk by Italian transformable furniture specialist Clei.
A hide-away wall bed
When it comes to the bedroom, this can also be artfully arranged so as to facilitate a seamless transition from one requirement to the next thanks to the integration of double-purpose hydraulically-supplemented wall beds that display a seemingly none-out-of-the-ordinary wall console of shelves and cabinets by day then pull out instantly into a double bed frame. Innovators at Clei have engineered a range of wall beds (HK$80,000) that cleverly fit into the nooks of your shelving units and wardrobe cabinets — seamlessly blending in with the decor and keeping everything tidily in place.