When you live in or own a house, you have a lot of scope for expansion or construction; you can add rooms, balconies, and terraces to your home, or even a separate wing if you have enough space around. All this is possible only if you have the budget and the space to make the extension, which happens when you are living in your own house. So this is why you should read this make your Small Apartment seem Bigger Guide.
Unfortunately, people living in apartments and rentals do not have the opportunity to expand or construct. If you live in a small apartment, moving into one for budgetary reasons or if you don’t have the means to expand your apartment, it doesn’t mean you can’t live in the home of your dreams. You don’t have to let the four walls close in on you just because you live in a small apartment, and your home doesn’t have to be cramped because the rooms are small.
There are a lot of architectural tricks and decorating styles that you can apply to make your small apartment seem bigger, wider, more spacious. You won’t have to knock down any walls or make new windows to create the illusion of a much bigger apartment when you live in a small one if you just learn the basics.
- Always use Light Paint
Your walls should always be colored in light paint, not dark ones. Light paint will make your rooms seem larger, more spacious and airy. You can use white on all your walls, or something similar to white – cream, off-white, beige, light blue, light pink, etc. would also do. You can color one or two walls in a slightly different color than the rest of the apartment, but the overall tone of your home needs to be in light colors.
Light-colored walls help bounce light around the room – both sunlight and light from your bulbs – and this makes the rooms look bigger than they are. You can decorate your bedrooms and studies in a slightly darker hue if you want to, but the open living room-dining space-open kitchens should always be painted in a lighter tone. Especially if your apartment has an open floor plan, the entire unit should be painted in very light and muted colors.
- Make your Floors and Ceilings Light
Not just your walls, but your floors and ceilings should be painted in light colors. A perfectly white ceiling will make the room seem taller than it is, and create the illusion of space. Similarly, whether you have a wooden floor, tiles or a cemented floor – the floor should also be of a lighter shade.
If you live in a rented apartment and can’t change the flooring, most of it should be covered in light-colored rugs, carpets or faux furs. Larger floor coverings in light tones can also help you to divide the open floor plan of your apartment into smaller sections.
While dark shades on your floors will make your rooms seem cozy and comfortable, they also make your home seem small. This is why, your common spaces and living rooms should always have light-toned walls, floors, and ceilings.
- Plan for Multiple Lighting Sources
This is a classic architectural rule that every room should have at least three different sources of lighting. The more sources of lighting in a room, the larger the room is going to look; the light sources are going to push your walls away and make the room look bigger than they actually are.
Windows, wall lights and lamps – these are usually the most common sources of light in any room. Overhead lights and hanging lights contribute better to making your rooms look bigger than a single light on a wall. So, if you have a small room you want to make look bigger, arrange multiple lights around the room, preferably in a triangular pattern.
- Get Skinny Furniture
For small apartments and rooms, the furniture should be modern and light. Instead of heavy and bulky furniture, smaller apartments should have lightweight furniture with thin legs and a lean body. Ideally, your couches should be without arms, so that they look open and lighthearted.
Large, bulky couches, coffee tables, and beds doesn’t just take up a lot of space, they also make the room look smaller. On the other hand, modern furniture that is lightweight and thin leaves plenty of space even after you’ve put in an adequate number of furniture inside a room.
At the same time, couches, tables, and beds with thin exposed legs are better than furniture that is covered in fabric, skirts or are boxy in any way.
- Buy More Multi-Functional Furniture
Couches that can be converted into beds, coffee tables with space for books inside, small dining tables that can be doubled in size within seconds, beds with storage under the mattress – these staple furniture for small apartments. With this multi-functional furniture, you won’t have to waste space for additional storage units.
Ottomans can serve both as sitting and storing options, both for shoes and for books. Wall length mirrors can hide all your makeup and cosmetics inside without having a separate vanity table for them. In the same way, high breakfast tables can hideaway stools and chairs under them, only to be pulled out when there’s company. Investing in this multi-functional and modern furniture will leave plenty of space in your small rooms so that your home doesn’t end up looking cramped and small.
- Leave the Windows Open
If you have large windows in the middle of your walls, leave them open for natural sunlight instead of keeping them covered with curtains. Curtains take up a lot of space even when they are pushed to one side, and can end up making your room seem cramped. Leaving the windows completely open and unobstructed will give your home a breezier feeling, while heavy curtains will cut off sunlight.
If you are worried about your privacy, you can always use blinds or Roman blinds for your windows. They’ll give you privacy when needed but won’t take too much space around your windows. You can keep the blinds pulled up all day long to allow plenty of light and pull them down at night.
- Use Minimal Artwork
It is a good idea to use your walls more than your floor space, but your artwork should not overwhelm the whole room. It is also better to use one large artwork to highlight a whole wall, instead of multiple smaller ones. Your artwork shouldn’t also be too dark or too dramatic if the rest of your room is light-toned; if your favorite painting or artwork has dark colors in it, the frame and the background should be light in color.
If you like to hang portraits, family photographs or small artwork, choose a single wall to do so instead of spreading them around the house. Most of your walls should have minimal artwork on them or be completely bare, instead of filled with wall hangings and photographs.
- Use the Space Near the Ceiling
There is usually ample space near the ceiling – over doors and windows – that we overlook. These spaces can be turned into open bookshelves or storage units, high above the ground. They’ll be great to look at the moment someone walks into your home, but would not be a hindrance or a waste of space.
Storage units near the ceiling will also keep your walls free for artwork or wall hangings, and your floors spacious as you won’t need to buy additional cupboards and bookshelves for storage.
- Go Big When Decorating
Instead of miniature decorative pieces and souvenirs, get big ones. Smaller items may be less expensive or easier to care for, but they crowd a room. It is better to buy bigger and more expressive decorative items only when you have adequate space for them.
When buying souvenirs on your travels abroad, instead of smaller decorative items, try to shop for items you can hang on the walls or use regularly. Instead of multiple souvenirs for your coffee table, buy fridge magnets, salt & pepper shakers, local print work and paintings, cushion covers, throw pillows or bed sheets. This way, you’ll have souvenirs from your travels but they won’t cram up your apartment.
- Get Transparent Furniture
When choosing furniture, choose the ones that are transparent or made of glass. Dining tables, clear plastic chairs or dividers with designs between them – this kind of furniture lets you see through them, and the rooms look bigger than they are, even when you have a lot of furniture in it. If you have a glass dining table and plastic chairs in the middle of the room, they’ll feel almost invisible in bright sunlight and you can see through the furniture across the room.
- Place Mirrors Everywhere
Mirrors in a small apartment works work in two ways: they reflect the light to make your room look brighter, and they reflect the opposite walls so that your rooms look bigger than they are. Mirrors are both vital in open rooms and dark, tight areas. You can hang them up, keep them standing against the walls; All of your closets and cupboards can have mirrors on the doors, giving your whole house a more spacious look.
Always choose mirrors that are more vertical than horizontal – tall ones you can hang on your walls and pillars, or prop against a wall. Also, mirrors with no or thin frames help better instead of mirrors with heavy ornamental frames.
- Pull Furniture Away from the Walls
There should always be a slight space between your walls and the furniture, even it is less than an inch. When you push your furniture against the walls, the whole room will start to feel cramped and full. Only a few inches between the wall and the couch or the bed will give the illusion of space. Besides, you can even pit a console table behind your couch and place a few tall vases or candelabra on them for decoration.
There are a lot of ways that you can make your small apartment look spacious and bigger than it is, but there’s one golden rule that you need to always remember: less is more. These days, not a lot of people have big apartments to live in, so we all need to make the best of what we have in our small, economy-sized apartments. We don’t need a lot of unnecessary furniture or clutter in our homes; rather, the less furniture and belongings we have, the more beautiful and stress-free our apartments are going to be.
