Never Too Small: He gained 3 million followers by showing off tiny homes around the world

SINGAPORE – What makes an ideal small home?

It has to be like a Swiss Army knife – “compact, functional and also well-designed” – says home owner Jacqueline Goh as part of a house tour video of her one-bedroom Housing Board flat in Fernvale.

This YouTube video, which has racked up over 900,000 views since it was posted in 2024, spends most of its time on the small touches that make up the 506 sq ft space.

Choosing “side hustle” furniture such as a shoe rack that doubles as a bench. Concealing the original storeroom door behind a full-height cabinet. Making a pull-up bar inconspicuous by adding it below a shelf of the same colour.

“This is not a house, this is a home,” commented one user.

That is the ethos that captures the enduring appeal of Never Too Small, a YouTube channel that has racked up more than three million subscribers since it began in 2017 – through intimate videos delving into the story and process behind compact homes.

The man behind Never Too Small

Never Too Small’s founder, Mr Colin Chee, 42, says that after eight years of curating homes for the channel, one of his biggest lessons goes against the conventional wisdom of small-space living: Embrace the mess, rather than trying to hide it.

“It’s the items that make a place sing. I call it an organised mess,” he tells The Straits Times on the sidelines of Singapore Design Week, where he is speaking on sustainable and compact living at a dialogue series by the Singapore Science Park.

“There’s a perception that if you keep the visual clutter away, it makes the space feel bigger, but I find that it makes the space harder to manage,” the Malaysian adds.

Mr Chee practises what he preaches in his 430 sq ft Melbourne studio apartment, which he shares with his partner. When he set out to design the space, he challenged himself with a budget of just A$5,000 (S$4,250) – a measly sum that his partner initially scoffed at.

This constraint sparked creativity. Mr Chee scoured second-hand markets and customised affordable Ikea pieces to create a visual identity that is his own – blending tiffin carriers and multifunctional furniture.

“Don’t define a space too quickly,” says Mr Chee, who has mixed feelings about the

rise of

trendy Japandi minimalism

.

While many interior designers might start by asking their clients what styles they prefer, Mr Chee believes it is important to let a space develop organically based on its inhabitants’ needs and personalities.

His prized find is an extendable desk he bought off Facebook Marketplace. While the seller suggested sanding it down to get rid of the stains and pencil marks, Mr Chee appreciates its character as a multifunctional piece of furniture perfect for mahjong sessions and dinner.

Embrace the imperfections, he says. After all, “we live in small spaces that are already so confined”.

Furniture and designs that one has to be precious with – with coasters and such – only serve to make a space feel even more cramped than it is.

Small homes are a different beast

When the channel began in 2017, it was a one-man operation and passion project. Now, it involves 11 full-time staff working with a network of freelance videographers from across the globe, with Mr Chee still actively curating the homes featured, in cities from Milan to Tokyo. The channel has highlighted 11 homes in Singapore.

In the early days, Never Too Small’s featured homes placed a strong emphasis on minimalism and clean visual presentation.

These days, Mr Chee’s team members try to capture the lived realities of a home, complete with visual clutter, personality-driven elements and ingenious budget solutions that define how people actually inhabit compact spaces.

“We don’t even mind if the apartment is messy. It showcases how the design wraps around everyday living, rather than how someone styles a design for a photo shoot,” he says.

This comes down to how small homes are a different beast compared with larger spaces. Their inhabitants tend to be younger and stay for shorter periods, opting for less obtrusive design choices. Their budgets also tend to be smaller, placing a greater emphasis on a do-it-yourself (DIY) vibe and affordability.

When analysing viewer comments on Never Too Small videos, Mr Chee finds that “DIY” and “budget” are the most frequently mentioned topics, followed by “storage”.

Never Too Small’s biannual viewer survey also finds that when asked about which they would prefer if they had a one-bedroom apartment under 50 sq m, 84 per cent opted for a flexible layout and storage, over the 16 per cent that opted for built-in storage and a fixed layout.

Secret sauce of compact living

In Mr Chee’s view, part of the secret sauce behind his channel’s success is its outsider perspective that translates into accessible and to-the-point presentation.

“Our audience trusts the way we tell our stories, and they like our quirky take on design,” he says. “None of us in the office has an architecture or interior design background. We’re just a group of crazy people who love design.”

While the first homes shown on the channel were by architects Mr Chee reached out to, these days, the majority of homes featured are from the large volume of viewer submissions which the team must sift through.

Mr Chee pays special attention to homes that do interesting things with their layouts, find innovative functions or capture the personality of its inhabitants.

“I don’t know how to describe it,” he says. “I just know it’s the right apartment we haven’t had in our collection yet. Sometimes, a mundane apartment can have two very ingenious ideas for the most common problems and I’ll feature it.”

He offers an example: “It’s as simple as if you shift the door 15 or 30cm away from the wall.”

That opens up space for storage, like a vertical shoe shelf.

“Just a simple shift of a door by a few centimetres transforms the whole entrance,” he says. “I will feature it just based on that idea because we haven’t seen it before.”