You may not be able to make your rooms bigger, but knowing how to make your room look bigger can increase your quality of life and how much you enjoy spending time at home. Another reason that you may wish to make rooms look bigger is if you are selling your home – rooms that appear larger and roomier are more likely to attract buyers than smaller, cramped ones.
So, how can you make a room look bigger than it is? In this guide, we will explore some of the best methods that you can use to make your room look larger. Are you ready to get started and find out how you can make your room more appealing? Then read on!
Top tips for making rooms look bigger
Key ways to make your room appear bigger include:
Emphasise the vertical
We often look at rooms from a horizontal perspective – when we think of making rooms look larger, we want to make them look deeper or wider, but that’s letting a lot of space go to waste. Verticality is an underestimated resource in terms of a room’s space, but it doesn’t need to be.
One way that you can take advantage of a room’s vertical space is to add tall pieces of furniture. For example, you could add a bookshelf to a room to make it look taller. You could also consider adding wallpaper with designs that go vertically from the floor to the ceiling, or a pendant light fitting. Anything that accentuates the vertical elements of the room will make it appear taller and add a greater sense of space.
Add a rooflight
Adding a rooflight to a room is a fantastic way to add natural light. Natural light is a great way to make a room look bigger, and adding a rooflight will help with this significantly. A rooflight, compared to a standard window, adds vertical light, helping to accentuate the vertical aspect of the room, as well as adding more light coverage to the room when compared to a traditional window.
Utilise furniture with visible legs
One of the most unconventional pieces of advice on the topic of how to make a room look bigger, you may wonder what visible furniture legs have to do with anything. The truth is, buying furniture that has visible legs instead of a skirt or similar measure allows you to see more of the floor space.
Seeing is believing, as they say, and seeing more of a room’s floor space can trick the brain into thinking that the room is bigger than if this space was obscured. It may sound strange, but we encourage you to try it to make your room seem bigger, it really works.
Use light paint
Lighter colours tend to make a room look brighter, which can create a convincing illusion of additional space. Yet if you don’t want your rooms to be given a coat of magnolia, we understand: there are a lot of different colours out there that can make a room seem noticeably larger. Don’t confuse light colours with bright colours, as you’ll soon see.
Some great colour options that can help to make a room larger include light powder blues, cream, light greys, or a pleasant natural yellow. If you don’t want to paint the entire room, you could also choose to go for an accented wall, which is where only one wall of a room is painted. If your room is already painted in a light colour, adding a bright colour like a bold red to one of your walls can really make the room’s natural light shine.
Minimise clutter
Nothing can make a room look bigger than actually making more space within the room. Clutter is a part of life – it happens to all of us, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a better way. If you would like to clear up your clutter and make your room look a lot larger, you’ve got a few options available to you.
The first is a good, old-fashioned clear-out – see what you could do without and donate it to a charity shop or sell it online. This might be enough, but if it’s not, it’s time to invest in some high-quality storage containers. Transparent storage containers are ideal, as they allow you to see what’s inside of them quickly, making it easy to retrieve something that you need.
Use a central layout
It’s very common to push your furniture up against your wall, which can give you more immediate floor space. However, there’s an issue with this approach – it means that you instinctively look towards the wall, which can make the room seem more constrained. To improve the sense of space in a room, you should pull some of your furniture, such as your sofa, away from the wall, creating a more central layout, with space on either side. This means that instead of having your eyes drawn to the wall, they will be drawn to the space on either side, creating an illusion of greater space.
Remove curtains
Floor-to-ceiling curtains are a great way to increase the sense of height in a room, but curtains also have their downsides – namely, they intrude into the room and can make it seem smaller. If you want to create a bigger room without floor-to-ceiling curtains, for example, if they do not fit with your aesthetic or established mood, you could choose to install a blind instead. Blinds, particularly exterior blinds, allow you to make the most of your room without affecting your privacy.
Add plants and natural textures
Plants can make a room seem much larger if you choose carefully. Hanging baskets or plants with vines creates a trail for the eye to follow, which can raise your focus, making the room seem taller and larger than it is. Natural textures in general, particularly in wallpaper, can also be a strong idea. In the case of wallpaper, natural textures add another dimension to your wall, making the wall seem larger.
Consider window dressings
We have already covered how using floor-to-ceiling curtains or blinds can make a room seem larger, but this is only scratching the surface of window dressing ideas for better interior design. For instance, take a curtain rod – there’s not much you can do with it, right? Wrong! Raising your curtain rod higher makes the room seem taller. Extending it beyond the window’s boundaries can also make your room seem wider.
Another option is to install a valance on the window, which is a particularly strong idea when dealing with a small window. These can add an extra sense of space to confined spaces.
Use stripes
In fashion, there’s an old maxim that wearing stripes makes you look slimmer, but stripes are useful in interior design too! Paint stripes or stripy wallpaper can make a room look notably larger but do be sure of whether you want horizontal or vertical stripes.
Horizontal stripes can make a room look wider, while vertical stripes can make a room look taller.
Increase natural light
Increasing natural light is a great way to make your room look larger. While windows in your walls may be what you first think of, we’d encourage you to turn your focus to roof windows. Whether your room has a flat roof or a pitched roof, there are options for you that can make your room look a lot brighter and larger. For example:
Use breezy fabrics
Lighter materials are better at making a room look bigger than their heavier equivalents. For example, sheer materials, linen, or cotton are fantastic for increasing the sense of light in a room, as they allow more light to shine through than things like wool, fleece or other heavier materials. Breezy fabrics, particularly in white, are a fantastic way to make a room look a lot larger.
Keep it simple
Whatever aesthetic your interior design targets, simplicity is key. This goes hand in hand with our point earlier about clutter – if your interior design is too complicated, with a lot of different objects in one room or cluttered decorative elements, the room can quickly begin to feel significantly cramped, which is far from ideal if you want a room to look bigger!
Keep pathways clear
Keeping pathways clear of clutter is vital to making a room seem a lot more spacious. If you have to step over discarded items to make your way through the room, it’s going to make you feel somewhat trapped and confined. If you must have some clutter, at least make sure that it’s not on the pathway through the room.
Add reflective surfaces
Reflective surfaces are a classic way to make your room feel a lot roomier. While you may not be able to add windows to all four walls of your room, you can add some mirrors to internal walls. Mirrors, or other reflective surfaces, may not actually create new light, but they can reflect it back into the room, which will allow you to make the most of any natural light that comes into the room. It will also reflect electric lighting, meaning you can take advantage of its benefits no matter the time of day.
Why adding rooflights will create the appearance of more space
Rooflights, whether they be fixed rooflights or opening ones, can make a room appear much larger. They can make rooms seem larger due to one key factor: light. No matter whether the room has a flat or a pitched roof, a rooflight can be installed that will flood the room with natural light. They also have a significant advantage over windows in your walls, which is that they are not tied to light coming from one specific direction – they can create a huge amount of natural light over the course of the entire day.
Choose Toughened Glass Systems for quality rooflights
At Toughened Glass Systems, we offer a wide range of roof windows and rooflights. If you want to know how to make a room look bigger with rooflights or would like help deciding which rooflight is right for you, please contact us today. Our team of experts will be happy to speak with you and help you make your rooms brighter and much more comfortable. Our products include:
More helpful articles
- How Many Windows Do I Need for My Room?
- How to Make a Room Cooler
- Can a Rooflight Add Value to Your Home?
- How to Add Value to Your Home: Top Tips to Boost Valuations
- How to Increase Natural Light in a Room
FAQs
What colour makes a room look bigger?
There is no one colour that can make a room look bigger. However, the general rule is that you should opt for light colours such as cream, white, grey, or a light blue.
How do you arrange a bedroom to make it look bigger?
There are a number of ways to make a bedroom look larger. While all of the tips we’ve explored apply, there are others that are more specific, including keeping your bedding simple, keeping furniture low to the ground and avoiding cluttering up either side of the bed.
Does a low bed make a room look bigger?
A low bed is one of the key ways to make a room look significantly larger than it is. This is a general rule for furniture: keeping your furniture low to the ground will make your room look larger due to taking up less space in your field of view.
