Making Small Spaces Look Bigger
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In today’s world, not everyone can afford to live in or decorate homes with lots of square feet. In most areas outside of the big cities these days, the trend is moving again towards purchasing manufactured housing, which is designed on a much smaller scale. However, even though you no longer have thousands of square feet at your disposal, it does not mean you cannot achieve an airy and “large” feel in a smaller space.
Storage is the first hurdle to overcome when you move into a smaller space. You are faced with two choices once you realize that not everything you loved in your previous home will into your new home. The first choice, of course, is to weed through what you have and decide what you can bear to give away or sell. Sometimes we need to make hard choices. The other option is to keep it, and figure out ways to display or fit things into the smaller areas.
The key to making smaller spaces look bigger is to keep the clutter down to a minimum. One of the main illusions you can employ to pull this off deals with windows and natural light. Placing light colored materials around windows will reflect the natural light that comes through them, and out into the room itself. A perfect solution to the storage issue in select rooms that have dominating windows you wish to use to create the illusion of space are blond and honey colored shelving units. Put down a lightly colored area rug beyond the windows, and that light is then reflected up to the ceiling.
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Place the furniture in the room around the area rug, and away from the windows to further cement the illusion. Further enhancement of the illusion can be done with light paint or wallpaper on the walls, as well as judicious placements of mirrors so that the light continues to frame the room, making it seem bigger than it really is.
Rooms without windows can be made to seem bigger by painting the walls in soft tones of blue or green for a sense of airiness. Lighting in these rooms are key, because without the natural light coming from a window, you will have to simulate it with ceiling lights. Again, keep the clutter to a minimum to avoid that “crowded” feeling. Mirrors with ceiling lights can be a little much, so you may want to use glassed artwork pieces, instead, with soft white bulbs in the overhead lighting. Glare is not an option in these spaces.
The easiest way to make any space seem lighter upon first look is to use light colors, in the furniture, on the walls, and on the floor. If your home has dark carpeting or flooring, lighten it up with complementary tones. Choose modern rugs or bamboo rugs, in lighter shades of what already exists in a room. This will give it a sort of from the bottom-up illusion of greater floor space that it actually has.
