One of the ironies of an economic downturn is that custom homebuilding and remodeling make a comeback.

During boom times, production builders take a larger share of new homes sold, and the custom market increases during down times, says Stephen Melman, director of economic services at the National Association of Home Builders in Washington, D.C.

In 2005, only 19 percent of new homes were custom homes. That share climbed to 31 percent in the second quarter of 2009.

Changing priorities in the recessionary economy is driving two trends in home construction and remodeling. First, the size of new single-family homes has decreased about 9 percent since 2007, down to 2,091 square feet in the second quarter of 2009.

That trend, in turn, is reinvigorating interest in custom home design, including cabinets and other built-in elements, as the focus shifts from sheer size to quality craftsmanship and efficiency.

It seems with the economy that people are looking at wasted space almost as a financial drain, and they're looking for ways to utilize every last inch of space, which calls for unique storage solutions in new and existing homes, says Durham, Conn.-based designer Sharon McCormick, a spokeswoman for the American Society of Interior Designers. This year, we've been designing custom everything, as people decide they're not going to be trading up after all, as well as for 50-somethings who are downsizing and need to make the most out of smaller floorplans.

As people look to maximize smaller spaces, flexible, multiuse rooms often are the answer. McCormick worked with a client to create an exercise studio that could quickly transform into a guest room. They had a custom-built Murphy bed installed, which folds up into the wall to mimic the appearance of built-in cabinets. When overnight guests visit, the exercise equipment folds up and is pushed to the side to make way for the pull-down bed.

As hobbyists and collectors decide to stay put, they're opting to customize corners or entire rooms. Working with an avid scrapbook maker, McCormick outfitted a nondescript room above a garage with a built-in workstation with places to store colored paper, stickers, rubber stamps and other scrapbooking supplies. Until they made the decision that this was their 'forever' house, she was working from a card table and boxes, McCormick says.

In living areas, people want consoles for flat-screen TVs with built-in storage for DVDs and video game components, says Joan Kaufman, principal of Naperville, Ill.-based Interior Planning and Design.

Custom kitchens often include small, built-in desk areas to accommodate a laptop, filing system and docking stations and chargers for various electronics, she adds.

It's not just custom cabinets and built-ins that are gaining in popularity. McCormick's design firm has seen an uptick in handcrafted woodwork in general.

We've been installing lots and lots of crown molding, in part because people moved into bigger houses during the boom and never got around to personalizing them, she says. So they have all these big rooms without a lot of character, and now they're going back and adding the finishing touches.