Start with the bed, because it takes up the most floor

In most small bedrooms the bed swallows up to half the available floor space, so it makes sense to stop thinking of it as one piece of furniture and start thinking of it as storage with a mattress on top. A divan base with two or four drawers is the simplest upgrade, and it slides neatly into a corner without needing any extra clearance along the walls. If you want more capacity, an ottoman bed that lifts on gas struts will take a full set of spare bedding, out-of-season coats and even a suitcase or two, which is often the difference between a tidy room and a permanently cluttered one.

Before you buy anything, measure properly. Note where the door swings, how much space the radiator needs and which wall is the longest clear run. Drawers need roughly 60cm of open floor in front of them to pull out comfortably, so a bed with drawers that face a wall is money wasted. If you are working with a single bed at 90cm wide, expect shallower drawers than a double, but they are still ideal for socks, underwear and folded T-shirts.

For teenagers in particular, a mid-sleeper or high-sleeper with a desk or sofa tucked underneath can free up an enormous amount of floor. Just check the ceiling height first, and make sure everyone sleeping in the room is comfortable climbing regularly.

Choose a tall, narrow wardrobe rather than a wide one

Here is the rule that changes small bedrooms more than anything else: go up, not out. A wardrobe that is 60cm wide and two metres tall will hold almost as much as one that is 120cm wide and a metre tall, yet it uses a fraction of the footprint. Floor space is the precious commodity in a small room; wall height is usually going spare.

Look for a single slim wardrobe, or two narrow ones pushed together with a few centimetres of gap so the doors open freely. Inside, make the space work harder:

• Add a second hanging rail below the first for shirts, blouses and short jackets, which doubles the usable hanging length.
• Keep the top shelf for things you use twice a year — spare duvets, winter hats, the Christmas decorations.
• Fit a shoe rack or a stack of clear boxes at the bottom, where hanging space would be wasted anyway.
• Hang a fabric organiser on the inside of the door for belts, tights, scarves and jewellery.

If the room has a low ceiling, a 1.8 metre wardrobe still towers over most beds and gives you far more storage than a chest of drawers ever will.

Use wall shelves for books and bedside bits

Once the bed and wardrobe are sorted, the walls are your next best friend. A floating shelf fixed roughly 45 to 50cm above the mattress makes a perfect bedside table without stealing floor space, and it keeps the surface clear for a lamp, a glass of water and whatever you are reading at the moment. Shelves 15 to 20cm deep are plenty for paperbacks and a small clock.

Fix them properly. Into a stud, or with decent hollow-wall fixings if you are going into plasterboard, and always check the weight rating before you load it up. Keep the heaviest hardbacks on the lowest shelf and put lighter items higher up. If you are nervous, a slim ladder-style shelving unit, secured to the wall with the supplied strap, does the same job and looks smart in a rented room too.

Fold clothes vertically so you can see everything

Deep drawers are where good intentions go to die. Clothes stacked flat become a tower you have to dismantle to reach the item at the bottom, which is why the neat pile collapses within a fortnight. Folding vertically solves it.

Fold each garment into a neat rectangle, fold it again into thirds if needed, then stand it on its edge in the drawer so the folded spine faces upwards. You can see every item at a glance, and nothing gets squashed underneath anything else. Use cheap cardboard shoeboxes or purpose-made drawer dividers to keep the rows upright and stop things slumping into each other.

• T-shirts and tops in the top drawer, filed on edge.
• Socks and underwear in a shallow second drawer, separated by dividers.
• Jumpers and bulky knitwear in the deepest drawer, folded loose rather than rolled, so they keep their shape.
• Under-bed drawers for out-of-season items, one category per drawer so you are not rummaging blind.

Make the most of awkward corners and the back of the door

The back of the door is one of the most overlooked storage areas in the house. An over-door hook rack will hold dressing gowns, coats and bags in seconds, and a slim over-door shoe organiser takes twenty pairs without touching the floor.

Corners that are too narrow for a wardrobe can take a set of corner shelves or a slim tower unit. If your bed has no drawers, flat storage boxes on castors will slide under it, and vacuum bags will compress a winter duvet down to almost nothing. The space above the wardrobe works too, provided you use matching boxes and keep them light and clearly labelled.

Keep it tidy with a five-minute evening reset

Storage only works if it is easy to put things away. Spend five minutes each evening — no more — returning anything that has drifted onto the floor, the chair or the windowsill to its proper home. Follow a simple one-in, one-out rule for clothes, and keep a laundry basket in the room so washing never piles up in corners.

Once a week, wipe the surfaces and the shelf above the bed. Once a month, pull everything out from under the bed and run the vacuum cleaner and crevice tool around the skirting boards. Small, regular jobs like these take minutes and stop a small bedroom from feeling cramped, dusty and out of control.