Making small rooms feel larger

A few large pieces instead of many small ones

The most common advice is to use small furniture in small rooms. That is only half true.

Six small pieces of furniture create six silhouettes, six edges, six interruptions. Two large pieces create two. A generous sideboard looks calmer than three small chests of drawers, even though it takes up more space.

What really has to stay small is not the width but the depth. Width costs wall space, and in most rooms there is plenty of wall space. Depth, on the other hand, costs room to move, and that is scarce. A shallow piece of furniture may therefore be long – it takes less from a narrow room than its width would suggest.

In practice this means: do not measure the footprint alone, but the path that remains in front of it. As long as you can get past a piece of furniture comfortably and without turning sideways, it is not too big, however expansive the dimensions sound on paper.

Visible floor

A room looks larger the more floor you can see. That is why furniture on legs helps more than furniture that closes down to the floor – the eye carries on underneath, and the surface appears continuous.

The same applies to rugs. A large rug that reaches almost to the walls makes the room look larger than a small one in the middle. The small one lies like an island in the room: it occupies the middle and leaves narrow leftover strips all round, so that the floor breaks up into several separate pieces. The large one pulls the same floor together into one.

If you have the choice, carry the same flooring through from room to room. Every change of material and every threshold places a line across the view and makes both rooms appear shorter than they are. For the same reason it is worth keeping the floor clear of small items: whatever stands on it makes it smaller twice over – once by the area it occupies, and once by the edge it adds.

One colour, several shades

Strong contrasts cut up a small room. If wall, curtain and large furniture stay within the same colour family, the boundaries blur and the room looks wider.

That does not mean white. A dark room can look large too. A dark, matt wall reflects little light and shows hardly any shadows; corners, edges and transitions stand out only faintly against it. This leaves the eye without the reference points from which it otherwise reads where a surface ends and how far away it is. The boundary of the room remains indeterminate – and what does not stand out clearly does not look cramped either. What matters is continuity, not brightness.

This effect does, however, depend on the dark colour being carried through consistently. Dark walls under a white ceiling create a hard line all round and press the room down. If you paint dark, take the ceiling, skirting boards and door frames with it – then the boundary between the surfaces disappears instead of being emphasised.

Using height

What is missing in floor area is often there in height. A tall, narrow shelf draws the eye upwards and uses volume that is there anyway.

The rule here: a piece of furniture that ends at half the wall height divides the wall into two halves. One that reaches close to the ceiling is read as part of the room and makes it appear higher. The same principle applies to pictures as to furniture – many small formats scattered across a wall produce many individual points, while one large format or a group with a common edge calms the same surface.

Curtains, too, should be hung higher than the window: close to the ceiling instead of directly above the frame, and wider than the window opening, so that when open the fabric hangs beside the reveal and not over the glass. This makes window and room appear larger and costs nothing but the fitting.

What hangs on the wall does not stand on the floor. Lights, shelves and bedside tables fixed to the wall give back floor space without costing storage – a trade that almost always pays off in small rooms.

Light into the corners

A single ceiling light in the middle of the room leaves the edges dark. But that is exactly where the eye reads how far a room extends. If the corners stay in shadow, the room feels as if it ends sooner than it actually does.

Several smaller light sources, distributed around the room and as close to the walls as possible, therefore work more reliably than one bright one in the middle. Light that washes up or down a wall makes the surface visible over its full height and pushes the boundary back visually. During the day the same applies to the window: whatever stands in front of it costs not only brightness but also the depth of the view outside.

What achieves less than claimed

Mirrors only enlarge a room if they reflect something worth seeing. A mirror opposite an empty wall doubles the empty wall. The worthwhile spot is where it takes in a window, a long line of sight or an open view through.

And glass furniture only looks light as long as nothing lies on it. A glass coffee table on which things collect is visually heavier than a solid one that stays empty – through the top you see the contents a second time.

It is similar with open shelving. It is considered light because it lacks doors, but it also shows everything that stands on it. In a small room, a closed front often calms the wall more than the open construction lightens it.