At some time or another, we all wish that we could have more interior space in our homes.
We dream of large, wide-open living rooms, kitchens with spacious marble islands, and bedrooms with sizeable walk-in closets.
We imagine greenhouses, libraries, and tall ceilings. We might not like the idea of living in a mansion in reality, but we can certainly fantasize about it from time to time.
It is easier to imagine having more space than to actually make that happen. After all, raising our ceilings and enlarging our living rooms would require tens of thousands of dollars in construction costs, if not an upgrade to a larger home altogether. These solutions are not feasible for the average person.
But there are still ways to make your living spaces feel bigger even if they aren’t any larger in reality. Doing so can help you feel less contained and constrained when spending time at home. It can create perceptions of freshness and openness that appeal to residents and visitors alike. So how can this be done? How can one make their interior space feel bigger? Here are a few tips:
Brighten your rooms
It’s well-established that brighter rooms generally tend to feel larger than darker ones. Brightness here refers both to decorative elements (i.e. the color of your walls and carpet) as well as natural ones (i.e. the amount of sunlight coming in from outside). Lightening these two elements can help you quickly grow a room’s perceived size.
Use reflective surfaces
On a similar note, reflective surfaces also have the effect of brightening a room and making it feel less cloistered. You’ve probably heard someone advise using mirrors to make small rooms feel large. The mirror approach is often a bit drastic and obvious, but you can get similar results (albeit more subtle ones) by incorporating a design scheme that maximizes glass, tiles, and light wood.
Change your furniture
Even though it takes up space, furniture is still an important contributor to a room’s sense of “largeness”. If you don’t believe this, take all the furniture out of your living room and then assess whether the room now feels larger or smaller – in most cases, it will probably be the latter.
This is not to say that you should put as much furniture in your living space as possible, but rather that you should find the optimal balance between too much and too little. Achieving this balance often involves creating clean sightlines and perhaps using custom pieces that fit seamlessly with the context. For example, if your kitchen feels too crowded and clunky, you might want to think about finding custom cabinets san diego that meld better with the surroundings.
Modernize your style
When the objects in a room feel big it is common for that room, by extension, to feel small. So if you have a massive, oversized couch that monopolizes your living room, that room will likely seem smaller than it truly is – even if it is largely enough to technically absorb the couch. So downsizing your style can help you upsize your room. For many people, an effective way of accomplishing this is by forgoing a traditional furnishing look for a sleeker, more modernist one.
These are just a few of the main ways to open up your interior space and make your rooms feel bigger. While we don’t always have control over the physical walls that exist in our environment, we usually have the power to change what lies between them – and to make the walls seem different as a result.
