The Best Dressers for Small Spaces (and Smaller Budgets)

There are many ways to resolve the plight of the floordrobe, from placing an aesthetic bench at the end of your bed to investing in a couch with hidden storage. We’ll do anything to avoid anointing another Clothes Chair™, and today that means finding a new, affordable dresser for our hobbit hole. 

We’re not naming names here, but there sure are a lot of “high-end” brands slinging chic $1K+ dressers that look like the long lost cousins of some far more affordable (and just as aesthetic) dressers for small spaces on sites such as Amazon and Wayfair. The best dressers for small spaces will usually have to meet our smol dimensional needs, whether they be for an extra short or tall dresser, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have to deliver on the design sauce. The following dressers come with 1960s-inspired rattan details, ample drawers, and many look like they could have come from the handsome estate sale of someone rich and culturally impressive. 

Pull up a pouf, and let’s find you the best dressers for small spaces (with great shelf life). 

Looking for the best dresser for a small space on an even smaller budget? This black dresser comes equipped with a whopping 13 drawers and is on sale for about $99 on Amazon right now. The steel frame of this dresser makes it extra durable, while the cloth drawer material makes it easier to assemble and far more lightweight so that you can move it around your apartment in a breeze. It has earned some pretty high ratings on Amazon from over 300 reviewers,  including one who writes that “all the pieces fit great together and it comes with the tools needed.” If you need hella storage in a pinch, you really can’t go wrong with this minimalist beast. 

Amazon has a surprising amount of mid-century modern and Japandi style furniture, including this six-drawer rattan dresser for just under $200. Depending on your own aesthetic, it can bring both a minimalist Noguchi lamp-style vibe to your home or a warm, Laurel Canyon energy to the bedroom if you top it with a fat lava 70s ashtray. Plus, according to one Amazon reviewer, “the color matched/blended well with other wicker items I already had.”

Speaking of mid-century modern dressers, this five-drawer dresser from Wade Logan looks like it could have easily sauntered over from a West Elm catalog with its expensive-looking, MCM-style carvings and Googie legs, and it’s 51% off. In the words of one Wayfair reviewer, it’s “more of a two-[person] job, but I was able to [assemble] it myself,” while another fan says that it’s “a beautiful dresser. It looks just like the photo, if not better, in person.”    

If you have a little more room in your budget, West Elm is the perfect place to peruse the kind of high-quality MCM furniture that will anchor your space, and the five-drawer Gemini dresser is the perfect blend of retro and contemporary aesthetics with its Modern, hidden drawer pulls and minimalist legs. Cop it in white or cool walnut. 

Noticing a pattern? We’re suckers for hidden drawer pulls, because they just make a room look less cluttered. This small MCM dresser is under $300 on Amazon, where it has earned a 4.3-star average rating from nearly 100 reviews. Folks say it takes a minute to assemble, but that the end product is worth it for the durability and great design. As one reviewer writes, “Just WOW! The drawers have so much more room than I was expecting. They’re nothing like cheap unstable IKEA furniture. I even stood on top of them (170 lbs) to boost myself into the attic.” 

Finding the best dresser for a small space can mean different things to different people; For some folks it’s finding one 13-drawer banger to take care of everything from linen storage to keeping those expensive SSENSE winter sweaters safe, and, for others, the task means finding the best narrow dresser that won’t eat up your square footage. This high-rated, narrow wood dresser from Amazon is equipped with six drawers and looks like the kind of (much more expensive) Ethan Allen furniture that I would have begged to steal from my parents house when moving into my first apartment. Plus, you can always swap out the drawer pulls for an easy DIY upgrade/personalization move.

Werner Herzog sure would love this sublime black dresser from Wayfair’s in-house brand, Latitude Run, with a whopping [toots airhorn] nine drawers. Normally, this high-rated tower costs close to $300, but it’s 49% off and a perfectly versatile, unassuming piece of furniture for the bedroom of someone who just wants their home to look adult, clean, and ready for a Criterion movie marathon. 

We always come running back to West Elm, because no one masters MCM style like its design wizards. So much so, in fact, that we even have a VICE editors’ guide to shopping West Elm—but we digress. We can’t stop thinking about this narrow dresser-console combo, because it looks so authentic to the period it pays homage to, and it’s on sale for about $100 off. It even includes a small hole in the lowermost inside shelf, in case you need it to moonlight as a desk or TV stand. 

Don’t sleep on some of our favorite places to buy epic used and vintage furniture online. We could browse 1stDibs for hours, seeking inspiration from this all glass, 1940s dressing table or its many archive Togo sofas, but it can also be home to deals on mid-century modern dressers such as this Czech piece made out of oak and beech wood. Cop it while it’s 30% off.

Kaiyo is like the much more affordable cousin of 1stDibs, because you can find everything from vintage one-of-a-kind pieces (please see: the burnt orange, epic 70s couch in this VICE article on assless chaps) to affordable, mirror-equipped dressers such as this big boi, which is 79% off its OG retail price. Considering most wood mirrors alone can cost hundreds of dollars, this dresser is a steal.   

Next up: Finding the perfect credenza. 

The Rec Room staff independently selected all of the stuff featured in this story. Want more reviews, recommendations, and red-hot deals? Sign up for our newsletter.