800 Square Foot Floor Plans: How to Lay Out a Small Apartment

A well-organized 800 square foot apartment can do almost everything a larger one does. The catch is the word organized. At this size there's no room for wasted corners, awkward hallways, or a bathroom you have to cross the whole apartment to reach, because one bad decision eats space you don't get back.

That makes the floor plan the most important call you make, more than the finishes or the furniture. Getting it wrong is also the costliest to fix, since correcting a layout later means paying to move walls and plumbing.

What you can fit in an 800 square foot apartment

Eight hundred square feet is close to the size of a typical newly built rental. The U.S. Census Bureau puts the median new built-for-rent multifamily unit at about 1,001 square feet, which leaves an 800 square foot apartment a little under that and squarely in normal one-bedroom territory. You have room for a real bedroom, a full kitchen, and a living area, with enough left over for one extra function: an office, a walk-in closet, or a dining table that seats guests.

The footprint here stays fixed at 32 by 25 feet. Within it, every layout makes the same set of choices about open space, private rooms, and storage. The two that matter most are where you put the walls and where the plumbing runs, because both decide what the apartment costs to build or change.

Two decisions that shape the budget

Every wall costs you twice

An interior wall costs money to frame, insulate, and finish. It also claims floor area and cuts the light on both sides. The layouts that feel largest at this size keep the public zone, meaning the kitchen, dining, and living, as one open room, and save the walls for the bedroom and bath where privacy earns them.

The wet-wall rule

Plumbing is the single biggest swing in a small renovation budget. When the kitchen and bathroom sit close together, ideally sharing or backing onto one wall, the supply and drain lines stay short. Push them to opposite ends of the unit and the bill climbs with longer runs, more demolition, and more finish work to close everything back up. Moving a bathroom's plumbing can add $5,000 to $15,000 to a project before any finishes, which is why placement up front matters more than any single fixture you pick later.

The priciest way to divide up 800 square feet is to add a second bedroom and a second bath, which is the trade most people get wrong.

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The case for one bedroom done well

Two bedrooms and two bathrooms make a tempting listing line, and in 800 square feet the result usually makes a worse home than a well-planned one-bedroom. Carve out a second bedroom and a second bath, and both bedrooms shrink toward the minimum while the extra bath splits your plumbing across the unit, raising the build cost for a room you may rarely use. A single 11 by 11 foot bedroom already sits at the small end of comfortable, and dividing that area in two pushes each room past it.

For most one and two person households, the better move is to spend that space on storage and comfort. A walk-in closet you reach every morning pays off in a way a spare bedroom rarely does, and a roomier bath keeps the whole apartment from feeling like a starter unit. The three layouts below show what that looks like in practice.

Three 800 square foot layouts to consider

Each works within the same 32 by 25 foot footprint and keeps the living space open. What changes is which extra function gets the leftover room.

800 square foot floor plan with a home office

This one suits anyone who needs a real desk behind a door they can close. It carves out a 12 by 10 foot office without crowding the rest, partly because it keeps the bathroom small and central. A compact 5 by 8 foot bath sits right by the kitchen wall, which keeps the plumbing runs short. The kitchen, dining, and living stay open across the other half of the unit.

800 square foot floor plan with a walk-in closet

Here the second-bedroom space goes to a 6 by 11 foot walk-in closet and an 8 by 11 foot bathroom with a double vanity, alongside a generous 14 by 13 foot bedroom. For a couple or a single person who values storage and an easy morning routine over a spare room, this is the trade that pays off daily.

The closet and bath sit together on one side, leaving a large open kitchen and living area on the other. That grouping keeps the bathroom plumbing close to the kitchen wall, so even an upgraded bath with a double vanity stays affordable to build.

Open-concept 800 square foot floor plan

This layout gives the most floor area to the shared space, with a kitchen, dining, and living room that run nearly the full width of the unit. The bedroom is a tidy 11 by 11 feet, with a walk-in closet and full bath stacked beside it. The dining table here is drawn for eight, which is the catch worth watching: at this size a four-seater keeps the room from feeling crowded, with chairs to add on the nights you host.

How to size a room to fit furniture and meet code

Floor plans, including the ones above, tend to draw furniture large to fill the page, so a layout that looks roomy on screen can feel tight once real pieces move in. Measure the bed, the sofa, and the table you actually own before you trust a plan's open feel, and right-size anything built for a bigger home.

Beyond comfort, a room has to clear the building code's minimums to count as a bedroom at all. The International Residential Code requires a habitable room to be at least 70 square feet and at least 7 feet in any horizontal direction, with a ceiling at least 7 feet high. A space that dips below those limits won't pass inspection as a bedroom, which matters the moment you think about splitting a room or turning an office into a place to sleep.

Put the two together and you can size a room before you commit to a wall, checking that a bed fits with clearance and the floor still clears the 70 square foot minimum.

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What to include in an 800 square foot plan, and what to skip

Build the plan around these:

• One open public zone. Combining the kitchen, dining, and living into a single room is the surest way to make the footprint feel generous.
• A compact bathroom near the kitchen. Keeping the two wet rooms close shortens plumbing runs and frees budget for everything else.
• Real storage. A walk-in closet or a wall of built-ins does more for daily comfort than a few extra feet of open floor.
• One flex room with a door. A single private room beyond the bedroom covers an office or guest space without chopping the plan into pieces.
• Light from more than one side. Placing the open zone where it catches windows keeps the apartment from feeling like a box.

Leave these out unless you have a specific reason:

• A second full bathroom, which splits the plumbing and shrinks every other room.
• Oversized furniture like an eight-seat table or a sectional built for a larger living room.
• Long interior hallways that spend square footage on circulation alone.
• Walls around the kitchen, unless cooking smells or noise genuinely call for them.
• A formal dining room separate from the kitchen, which rarely earns its footprint here.

What a renovation can reasonably change

On paper an 800 square foot apartment is 800 square feet. In practice, wall thickness, structural columns, and mechanical chases trim the usable area, so the rooms run a little smaller than the labeled dimensions suggest. Knowing that before you fall for a plan saves disappointment later.

Some things usually stay put without major cost or approvals:

• Load-bearing walls that carry structural weight.
• Plumbing stacks that serve units above and below.
• Window and exterior door openings.

Other changes are reasonable to make:

• Non-load-bearing partitions can come down. Opening a closed kitchen to the living room is one of the most common ways to make a small apartment feel larger.
• Closets and storage can be reworked. Reframing a closet or building one in is inexpensive next to anything that touches plumbing or structure.

Telling which walls carry weight and where the stacks run takes a trained eye, not a tape measure. A contractor who reads the plan before you commit can flag the changes that aren't possible as drawn, while they're still erasable lines instead of a redesign you've paid for.

Common mistakes that shrink an 800 square foot apartment

• Too many interior walls. Every partition you add eats floor area and blocks light, chopping the apartment into rooms too small to use well. Aim for the fewest interior walls you can live with. For an alternative, look at pony walls.
• Hallways that only connect. A corridor whose single job is moving you between rooms spends square footage on nothing else. Pulling circulation through the open living zone instead returns those feet to a room you actually use.
• A kitchen boxed in by walls. Closing the kitchen off cuts it from the light and sightlines of the main room and makes both spaces feel smaller. Opening it to the living area is one of the highest-return structural changes at this size. Removing a non-load-bearing kitchen wall is also one of the more affordable structural moves, since it rarely touches plumbing or the building's frame. Where the wall does carry weight, a contractor can often swap it for a beam and keep the open feel.
• Walls that block the windows. Dropping a partition in front of an exterior window darkens the room behind it and wastes light the apartment already has. Keep new walls off the window walls wherever the plan allows.
• A door that swings into a small room claims 10 or more square feet you could otherwise furnish. A pocket door or a reversed swing gives that space back for little cost.

Plan your 800 square foot renovation with Block Renovation

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