Furniture makers are engineering pieces to take up less space

Even before these days of shrinking economic expectations, furniture makers were getting the message from consumers: Small is the new black.

A trend at this week’s High Point Market is for smaller furniture that fits into smaller living spaces. The twice-a-year furniture industry trade show in High Point, N.C., displays thousands of new home furnishings that consumers could see in stores in a few months.

Furniture manufacturers are responding to downsizing baby boomers and the growing appeal of urban living by reducing the scale of dressers, coffee tables, night stands and the like. They are compressing home offices into a single fold-out cabinet. And they’re cutting back the length of sofas and entertainment centers that sprawled across the length of walls in McMansions.

An example is the Micro-Office by Sligh Furniture Co., of Holland, Mich., which should be in retail stores by next spring, spokesman Bob Kreter said. The unit, with a retail price of $4,500, looks like an armoire 53 inches wide by 80 inches tall with nooks at the top for framed photos. But pull back the bifold doors and untuck the chair with the fold-down back and you can take a seat before a desk big enough for a laptop, printer and files.

Aspenhome, based in Phoenix, Ariz., is offering a bedroom valet that looks like a TV stand with drawers underneath, but hides a built-in laundry hamper and slide-out ironing board.

Magnussen, based in New Hamburg, Ontario, has reduced the scale of their entire bedroom sets, Essenberg said. Its standard dresser size has been trimmed from 72 inches wide to 64 inches to fit into smaller rooms, but its height increased to match higher ceilings and retain storage capacity.

About 20 percent of sales for Lexington Home Brands are scaled-down pieces, Chief Executive Officer Phil Haney said. Its Zacara collection of dining room and bedroom furniture, designed with contemporary styling and modest size for urban condos or apartments, is one of the Thomasville, N.C.-based company’s best-selling lines, he said.

Smaller furniture also is part of a trend which shows consumers increasingly want to eliminate clutter and organize what’s left, said Pam Danziger, president of Unity Marketing, a marketing consulting firm that studies consumer behavior.

“There is a whole new change in the way people look at luxury. It’s moving away from being in-your-face, conspicuous consumption to how you feel in your environment,” Danziger said. “It’s a new, more European approach. It’s not the size, it’s what you’ve got in the home.”