It may be that buyers making some space sacrifices with their next home purchase need a design eye to help them visualise how they could live in a small home. If thinking visually isn’t your thing, you can consult with or recommend architects and interior designers to help clients on how they might use the space.

First Light Studio architect, Nick Officer often helps friends and clients when looking at a home to buy. He helped friends turn their two bedroom, one bathroom Lower Hutt home into a three bedroom, two bathroom home a few years ago. He didn’t change the footprint of the house, just flipped where the living room, kitchen and dining space were with the bedrooms, took out a sunroom - and in doing so found space to add an extra bedroom and a bathroom.

“It’s more about making sure the spaces are designed for what they need to be and getting rid of space that’s not used,” he says. It’s important not to compromise on function, he adds.

“They love this house, they never thought they’d live there longer than five years but they love it, and the location, and it works for them,” he says.

Bay of Plenty architect Stephen Bird says the important thing in making a small home feel bigger than it is, is its volume.

“When homes have smaller footprints, you have to think about how to set up the rooms, how you’ll live in them, furnish them and move around in them as well,” he says.

The architect is a big fan of verandah spaces that the living space can flow out to and being inventive about how you access and store things.

Stepehen says there’s also value in thinking up - he’s put in a mezzanine space on the top level for the main bedroom.

Materials are important too, adds the architect. In one recent home he used a lot of plywood in ceilings, as well as white walls and lighting to enhance the space.

More homebuyers are sacrificing space due to reduced budgets

Dressing the house for success

Bringing in some architectural nous

Removing the numbers from the buyers’ minds

Potential expansions are always worth flagging