TO reach the apartment where Daniel and Dasha Faires live, you pass through the vestibule of a small century-old brick building on Ludlow Street and head down a dingy tile-lined hallway. But hang a left near the trash can, and you will find something amazing.

This is the tiny home where the Faireses, newlyweds from Arkansas in their mid-20s, have lived for the past year. Both work in fields that demand visual creativity. Ms. Faires is a sales representative for BB Dakota, a moderately priced line of women’s fashions, and Mr. Faires builds furniture and owns a design firm that bears his name. Together they have created an exquisite space in which a good eye trumps a shoebox.

And shoebox in this case really means shoebox. The apartment, for which they pay $2,000 a month in rent, has just two rooms, a bedroom and an everything-else room. When the Faireses were married last summer, the wedding invitation instructed guests wondering what to give the happy couple to “please remember that they live in a 375-square-foot apartment in New York City.”

Yet thanks to such touches as strategically placed mirrors, votive candles deployed with a lavish hand and incandescent Edison bulbs whose golden filaments glint like giant fireflies, the space shimmers. Eleven-foot-high ceilings make it easy to forget that the rooms are only eight feet wide. Gauzy white tulle curtains conceal windows that face brick walls and dreary alleyways.