Small Space Study Nook Ideas for Bedrooms and Apartments

We do not have a playroom, a bonus room, or a spare anything. What we have is a 1940s house in Kansas City with small bedrooms and a kitchen table that is also a craft table, a mail table, and occasionally a place we eat. When homework became a nightly thing, I needed a study spot and I had approximately no square footage to give it.

So I got weirdly obsessed with small study nooks. Here is what I learned building two of them, one in a bedroom corner and one in a closet, plus the version I would do if I were in an apartment.

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The measurements that actually matter

I wasted money before I knew these numbers, so here they are:

• Desk depth of 18 to 20 inches is plenty for a kid with a notebook or a laptop. Standard desks are 24 to 30 inches deep and that extra depth is the whole reason they do not fit anywhere.
• Width of 32 inches minimum. I tried a 24 inch desk and there was nowhere to set a water cup, so the water cup went on the notebook, and you can imagine how that ended.
• Desk height around 24 to 26 inches for elementary kids. Adult desks are 29 to 30 inches, which puts a nine year old’s shoulders up by their ears.
• Feet flat on something. Floor, footrest, a stack of books, anything. Dangling feet means squirming in about eleven minutes.
• 36 inches of clearance behind the chair to pull out and stand up. This is the one people forget in a tight room.

Option one, the bedroom corner

This is what we did in my daughter’s room and it takes up 20 inches by 40 inches of floor.

I used a narrow writing desk against the wall between her dresser and the window. The window placement matters, natural light on the left side since she is right handed so her hand does not shadow her paper.

The other pieces:

• A clamp on desk lamp instead of a base lamp. Clamping to the edge gave back about eight inches of usable surface, which on a small desk is enormous.
• A small pegboard on the wall above. Everything goes vertical. Pencils, scissors, headphones. If it is on the desk it will be in the way.
• A narrow three tier rolling cart that lives beside the desk and rolls to the kitchen table when she wants company. That cart made the nook flexible and it is the piece she uses most.
• An adjustable height chair. Not the cute one. The adjustable one. She has grown two inches since we set this up.

Option two, the closet nook

My son’s room is smaller and has a closet that was mostly holding air. We pulled the door off, removed the lower rod, and put a 36 inch board across at 25 inches high on two cleats.

It cost about sixty dollars and one afternoon, and it is genuinely the best desk in the house. The closet walls hold everything, there is a shelf above for books, and when he is done he steps out and the whole thing disappears from view.

Two things I would tell you if you try this. First, closets have no light, so plan lighting before anything else. We used a plug in strip light under the shelf. Second, check for an outlet nearby before you commit, because we did not, and now there is a cord running along the baseboard held down with adhesive cord clips.

Option three, the apartment or no extra wall version

If there is truly no floor space, the two that work are a wall mounted fold down desk and a rolling cart plus the dining table.

The fold down is great and the honest catch is that it has to be mounted into studs, so renters need to check the lease first. The cart version is what I would do anyway. One cart, stocked, that gets wheeled to the table at four o’clock and wheeled back at five thirty. It is not a nook, but it removes the actual friction, which is hunting for a pencil.

We did the cart version for a year and a half before we had the corner, and it was fine. Do not let perfect stop you here.

What flopped

A pretty desk with no storage. It looked incredible in the room and within a week the surface was a landfill because there was nowhere to put anything. Storage is not optional, it is the whole point.

Putting the nook in a quiet corner of the house. I read that kids need a quiet dedicated homework space and I built one in a spare corner of our bedroom. Nobody used it, not once. My kids want to be near me. The nook in her own room only gets used because I am usually in the hallway or the next room.

A big corkboard. It filled with paper immediately and became visual noise. The pegboard works because things hang on it and then come off it.

A bean bag reading spot right next to the desk. That was just a bed next to a desk, and you can guess how homework went.

What I would skip

Skip the desk with the built in hutch, it makes a small desk feel like a phone booth. Skip a full drawer unit under the desk, it eats leg room. Skip themed decor, they will hate it in fourteen months. Skip buying a chair before you know the finished desk height.

If you are starting today

Measure your kid sitting down, elbows at about ninety degrees, and write down that number. Then find any surface at that height that is 32 by 18 inches. That is a study nook. Everything else on this list is improvement on top of a thing that already works.

xo, Pam