It’s a problem lots of people run into at one time or another: while they love their home, they can’t help but feel that it’s a little, well… cramped. It’s not so much that they struggle to fit in their fixtures and furnishings, but more that everything feels like it’s a bit too close together. While the obvious solution is to upsize or extend, for most of us, this isn’t an option, either because of a lack of funds or because we like where we live and don’t want to change it. This might seem to leave you with an unsolvable conundrum, but in fact, there are lots of tips and tricks to make your interior feel larger without spending lots or requiring an excess of effort. Here are just a few of them.
Light it up
If you’ve ever sat in your sitting room or another part of your house and felt like the walls were closing in on you, one way to fix this is by installing some clever lighting. We lose a lot of space to shadows, especially in an evening, which can make rooms feel smaller and more cramped than they really are. This can really affect moods, whilst also diminishing the decorative work you’ll have already made in certain rooms.
But there are specialist companies such as Thomas Rebmann’s lights.co.uk who can help you resolve this issue, providing suggestions on how best to install wall lighting for living room or bedroom-type areas in order to achieve the effect you want. Specially selected by the experts, the lighting can be placed in dimly-lit corners or around shadowed edges to enhance the surroundings and create the illusion of a larger area.
Install mirrors
On the subject of cleverly placed optical illusions, installing mirrors can also be a good way to make your rooms seem larger than they really are. That’s because they act in the much same way as they would in a fairground funhouse, by reflecting your surroundings back at you to make them appear more spacious. This trick works particularly well if you place the mirrors opposite windows or a light source, so you might want to invest in a lamp or some fairy lights and install these and your new looking glass simultaneously. We promise you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how much of a difference it makes. The added light, whether it be natural or artificial, will also help you feel more awake and alive.
Choose your colour palette with care
Lighting and mirrors both offer inexpensive options for enlarging your space, but so too does switching up your colour scheme. In fact, it turns out that a few pots of paint can make all the difference, with lighter-hued walls instantly making rooms appear bigger and brighter than before. Like the other techniques we mentioned, this is all about the optical illusion it creates, with paler surfaces being more reflective and making the surrounding space seem more open and airier. Again, this can make the room appear larger and help increase a positive feeling within it.
This means, for example, that switching out darker tones for pale and pastel-coloured counterparts can make a huge difference, and this goes for accessories as well as your paint swatches. Offset whites, creams, and pastels with soft blues, fresh greens, and pale pinks and yellows, and your whole interior will look larger and more inviting.
Isn’t it time you made some minor tweaks to make your home seem instantly roomier and more appealing?
