7 Ways to Make a Small Home Look Bigger

There are advantages to a small house—including coziness, affordability, energy efficiency—but nobody wants a home that feels too small. Fortunately, even if your walls impose brute physical limits on what you can and can’t fit inside, there are many interior design approaches you can take to open up your space and make it feel roomier than it actually is.

1. Put Color To Work

It’s well established that lighter-hued paint or wallpaper creates a feeling of spaciousness, while darker, light-trapping shades only bring the walls in closer. When choosing your colors, stick to neutral or light shades—and if you’re planning to mix and match, parcel out the secondary color in smaller splashes.

The power of color to lighten up your space doesn’t stop at the walls: extend the neutral color scheme to your furniture, upholstery, and finishes, using cooler and more delicate shades to lend an openness to all your surfaces. 

In most instances, continuity between the shades on the wall and those in the room will do the most to boost the feeling of spaciousness by blending in rather than clashing with the environment. But there is at least one exception: repainting the interior of your bookshelves in a hue that’s darker than the walls will create the illusion of deeper space. 

2. Opt for Simple Pieces

Your furniture and the other objects that fill out your rooms have a role to play in your space-expanding mission. Aim to achieve a small number of items that form simple shapes with clean lines to avoid physical and visual clutter. You don’t need a large sofa if a small couch will comfortably seat the family; just keep chairs on hand for when guests are over.

3. Establish a Focal Point

While you’ll want to keep each room’s overall design scheme fairly simple, a single more ornate piece—a piece of art, say, or a show-stopping light fixture—can go a long way toward sculpting your space and giving it the kind of movement that wards off the feeling of enclosure.

4. Mirror, Mirror

If you make that focal point a mirror, you get a two-for-one since wherever you place it, a mirror will add new dimensions to your space, thus making it appear larger. One mirror facing a window or two facing each other will maximize the effect. If any of your rooms are particularly narrow, one large mirror or a gallery of small ones can add width. This principle extends to all reflective surfaces, so it’s also something worth keeping in mind as you select your tables and other decorative elements.

5. Draw Eyes Upwards

When a person’s eyes are directed to a room’s ceilings or the higher points of a wall, it instantly imparts a feeling of generous verticality. Consider adding wallpaper or a subtly eye-catching paint job to the ceiling, aim higher than you might otherwise with your wall ornamentation, or install shelving just below ceiling level. If you’re putting in new walls, consider vertical shiplap. When selecting furniture, remember that the lower to the ground a piece is, the more open space it will leave above. If you want the bathroom to appear larger, consider installing a pedestal sink and a medicine cabinet for storage.

6. Master Negative Space

When decorating a small room, it’s only natural to begin by putting the large pieces of key furniture against the walls to keep the center of the room open, but this can be a mistake. By maintaining at least one clear pathway in a room, you can reduce the claustrophobia created by clutter and establish the visual movement and continuity that impart a sense of roominess. If possible, you might also consider moving furniture just a few inches in from the wall, leaving a small space that will lend an openness to the whole room. 

7. Let The Light Shine

Both natural and artificial light can be allies in the fight to make your space feel bigger. Brightness itself will open up your rooms, so keep your windows as clean as possible, and eschew drapery and rugs, which absorb light (and take up space!). 

Shutters or lightweight blinds can offer privacy without casting a damper over the sun’s space-giving rays. Just keep them open during the day, because an open view to the outside is one of the best ways to suggest a more spacious feeling. 

There are a couple of different considerations to weigh as you set up your interior lighting. On the one hand, top-down lighting can eliminate the need for lamps and give you more floor space—and recessed lighting and sconces don’t create a closed-in feeling. 

On the other hand, too harsh an overhead light can pool in one space and cast shadows over the others, while the use of a few smaller lamps can establish for the eye an orderly pathway through the room. 

The bottom line? Approach lighting on a room-by-room basis.