7 ways to make a small home feel bigger
Photo by Philipp Berndt on Unsplash
It doesn't matter how big our home is, it's never big enough. You could have a huge living room and your bathroom could be tiny, you could have a big bathroom and your living room could be a few feet too small. I feel your pain.
In this article, I will share with you some of the top tips I have learned over the years to make a small home feel bigger than it is.
1) Install shelving.
Shelving is one of the best ways to make your home feel big without breaking the bank. Shelving can go in any room and can free up your floor space, leaving your home feeling much more spacious.
One tip with shelving though is to leave some space on them, filling your shelves too much is going to have a reverse effect making your home feel more cluttered than before.
My advice would be to experiment to see what looks best for your home.
2) Get rid of items you don't need.
All of our homes have items of furniture that we don't need. To make the most of your home you will need to either sell the furniture (eBay or other auction sites), throw them in the skip or put them in a self storage container.
Getting rid of a settee or a bed you don't use will free up so much room in your home and will make your home feel much bigger than before.
3) Match your curtains and walls
This trick can also be applied to the bathroom with your tiles, what you will want to do is match your curtain and wall colour, this way they blend into one and other. This makes your eye flow across it rather than the curtains breaking up the flow of the room.
In the bathroom the effect is the same by having the same flooring and wall tiles, your eye is tricked into thinking there is more room than there is because it doesn't get distracted in the line breaks with different tiles.
4) Keep items off the floor.
Back in point one where I mentioned installing shelving, I discussed that shelving opened up space. The same effect is created when you move items off the floor by having furniture that has legs.
The legs on the furniture allow you to see under them and this makes it look like your floor space is open and tricks the eye into thinking there is more space available.
Glass furniture also has the same effect as your eyes can see through them to the floor, by seeing the floor once again you are tricked into thinking there is more space than there is.
5) Add mirrors.
Another optical illusion to add more space to your home. Mirrors reflect the view in your room, and by adding larger mirrors you create a larger space.
If you visit restaurants often you will see many of them use larger mirrors on their wall, the reason for this is so that the restaurant doesn't seem so cramped and feels open. When in reality they are cramming as many people as possible in a room to make as much money as possible.
6) Don't use rugs or curtains.
In step 3 I mentioned matching the curtains and the wall paint together, but another take on that is to get rid of the curtains altogether. By losing the curtains you allow your eye to take in the outside world, this brings the feeling of the space outside indoors.
Curtains do offer a certain level of privacy so this tip may not be for everyone, but a halfway hack would be to add a lightweight mesh to cover the window. This way you still get some of the outside and a bit of privacy too.
Rugs in a small home are a no-no for me. A few tips above I talked about keeping the floor space open for a feeling of space. Adding a rug takes away this space and makes your home look cluttered.
7) When in doubt, paint it white.
White reflects light and opens up your room making it feel much larger than it is. If you paint your walls and ceilings white you also stop your eye from noticing where one space starts and another finishes.
Conclusion
When you have a small home it's very easy to clutter it and make it look smaller than it is. With the few tips above you can make a world of difference to your home.
If you have any other tips please leave them in the comments below.