When living in a small space, you have to take advantage of every inch. Most times it is difficult to devote space to larger pieces of furniture, like beds, dining tables, and sofas.
If your priority is a large sofa, consider looking at sofas with storage build in.
Loose box storage is often hard to fit under a sofa, they tend to have short legs.
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For some reason, sofas rarely come with options for storage, but we have found some good options to check out.
Sofas With Built-in Storage
Let’s start with some standard sofas with the option to lift up the seat(s) and place storage boxes inside them.
Sofas With Storage Below The Seats
These first two designs are pretty straight forward. They are typical sofas on the outside but they have storage below the seats.
Just a great way to have what you need in the living room without having to place cabinets.
This sofa is found over at Wayfair at only $259 so it’s a very affordable solution.
You can find them here!
I don’t think anyone will notice the storage so it’s also a good place to store valuables and stuff you don’t want to be found in case of theft.
The system is built so you have easy access to the stuff. And as soon as you remove any pillows or blankets you can lift up the seats to access the stuff.
Loveseat With Space For Storage Boxes
This is another similar design. This is just a much smaller sofa we can categorize as a loveseat style couch.
This design is a pretty good design because you can easily fit several storage boxes inside it. Even though it’s a small sofa for two people. Just great for newly married couples in a small apartment or for a student dorm room.
There’s a handle that makes it easier to lift the seats.
This model is small and will fit in most smaller homes and tiny houses. You can fit it in everywhere and the extra space for storage is especially nice to have when you live in a confined space.
A Classic Design Couch
This model is found over at Amazon. They also have quite a lot of interesting sofas with storage inside the seat.
This sofa is probably the one in this list that looks least like a storage sofa unit. It looks very much like a standard sofa so it’s just neat to be able to hide some stuff away inside it.
Amazon actually has several great designs. Let’s take a look at some other models with space for storing pillows, crafts, winter clothes, and other good stuff.
Retro Sofa With Storage
This retro sofa is also really cool.
You can get it in several strong colors and it has that vintage look that many people like. It’s a great statement piece of furniture to spice up a living room or a teenage room.
It’s made of leather (or similar) and there’s space for a ton of books, toys or whatever you need to get out of the way.
Classic Sofas With Storage Drawers
Glastop has standard models, probably the cheapest, but you can special order most of their furniture to your needs.
You can have sofas with storage, build to your exact measurements if you need it a bit more narrow, low or high to fit your space.
You can also choose a style of stitch lines and fabric.
You can even bring your own fabric if you want to.
This first one, called Mariner Marine Sectional, comes with up to three functions. It is, of course, a sofa, and turns into a sleeper sofa, if you want that function.
Under the seats it has built-in drawers, that go the full length of the sofa, giving you a lot of storage in a space that would normally be wasted.
Sofa with flip-up seats
This storage sofa is called Classic Custom Marine. It is, as the name gives away, a classic comfortable sofa. The great thing about it is the amount of stuff you can store in it.
To access the storage area, you flip up the seats. A lot of times lifting up an upholstered seat involves moving a lot of loose cushions.
Not on this sofa!
The whole seat is on a hinge that makes it come out a little before being lifted up. As a result, you have easy access to your stored items.
Footstools And Ottomans With Storage
This fine piece of furniture is also a great way to store stuff in a tiny space.
You can place everywhere as it is quite narrow and not too long either. It’s a great piece of furniture to take into the living room when you need seating for 2-3 extra people during a party.
You can find this cool footstool here with free shipping.
The footstool has hinges that can hold the weight of the seat up while you get to the stuff inside. Very nice and handy.
It’s also a great way to hide stuff out of sight. We all need to have some books, pillows, or maybe an extra duvet for guests somewhere. Right?
This is an ottoman we round at Ikea. We have filled it up with old DVDs and other stuff we haven’t gotten rid of (yet).
The cool part about this very cheap and simple design is that we can turn the lid in order to use it as an extra table space around the sofa area.
Other Ways To Hide Storage In The Living Room
You can hide storage inside a seating area like this.
It’s a very simple idea and if you have the space to build a stage like this you can insert drawers for storage. We actually built one many year ago and it was quite easy.
You can also hide a trundle bed inside this construction.
You can see more ideas like this in our post about furniture for tiny houses.
This next idea is a cool design with built-in drawers around a staircase is from the Zoku Apartment in Amsterdam.
We filmed these tiny prototype apartments a couple of years ago and we were really impressed with how well they have managed to hide storage between the stairs.
You can store lots of clothes, photo albums and other great stuff inside these drawers.
Here’s a picture with the staircase pulled out from between the storage units in the wall.
We have a sofa behind the camera. In fact, I think I am standing on the sofa while I shoot the picture.
The sofa is placed up against the wall so you can figure how small the apartment is. It’s a very small layout and you have the sleeping area behind the blinds (up the stairs).
You can see the stairs being pulled out in this video we shot at the space:
(We just passed 1.6 million views on this video so it’s pretty popular. You’ll see why!)
If you are in a one-bedroom apartment or a tiny studio apartment you might consider this option.
It lets you sleep on top of the shelving unit with a ton of storage.
It’s a great DIY project you can build over the weekend and it ads a lot of functionality. It’s especially great if you have a high ceiling. It’s always important to utilize the vertical space in tiny spaces.
This is a great way of doing that.
It’s not a sofa or a couch but you can definitely sit on top of it with your friends and use it in the same way as a sofa unit.
I hope you liked the ideas. I sure enjoyed writing it and putting together the ideas for you guys.
Sofas are often a piece of furniture people forget about when they are planning for storage in the living room.

