How to Make Your Home Look Bigger

Let’s be honest here, our homes are never quite as large as we want them.  No matter how much space we start out with, we always end up with more stuff than space, and the house never looks big enough.  This doesn’t mean you need to pack up and move into a bigger house, though.  I’ve put together some tricks for you to make your house look bigger without having transition into a bigger, more expensive home.

1. Declutter – With everything we tend to accumulate spread around our living space, a room will look much smaller. A common real estate trick is to show as much floor and wall as possible when selling your home.  This trick also works for making your home look bigger on a daily basis.  To do this, find ways to organize everything.  Go through your things and sell or donate things you no longer want or use.  For the things you’re keeping, get shoe racks, build or buy shelves or cubbies, or organize them nicely in a closet.
2. Space Everything Out – This step also falls into the concept of showing more floor and wall. Spread the furniture out to allow some space between everything.  Cramming it all together may make one side of the room look bigger, but it makes the room as a whole look smaller overall.
3. Paint with Light Colors – Dark colors make a room look smaller and sometimes slightly claustrophobic. Instead, choose lighter colors like white, cream, ivory, and light greys, pinks, and blues.
4. Invest in Mirrors – Mirrors are multi-functional. They’re great for their obvious purpose of making sure there isn’t food on your face and that your hair is meeting-ready, but they’re also great for décor and making a room look bigger.
5. Paint the Ceiling Darker – It may seem counterproductive since I’ve already said that lighter colors open up a room, but that’s when they’re painted on a wall. When painting a ceiling, going darker will give the room depth.
6. Paint the Trimmings a Different Color – Yeah, I know, I’ve talked a lot about paint. If the trimmings, baseboards, etc., are painted a different (still light) color (ex. walls are white, trimmings are light blue), it opens up the room and makes it look bigger.  The different colors on the walls give the room more depth, causing it to look bigger than it actually is.
7. Choose large-scale flooring – Installing tiles with larger patterns make the room look larger, and installing them diagonally only accentuates the effect of the large tile. The larger tile also has the added benefit of having less grout, and therefore, it can stay cleaner with much less effort.
8. Choose furniture that is low to the ground. – When furniture has more space above it, it opens up the room in the same way a vaulted ceiling does. Obviously, there is not any more space in the room itself, but the more wall that shows between the furniture and the ceiling, the bigger the room appears.
9. Move aside the curtains – Or get rid of them altogether. Curtains and window coverings tend to close off the room by creating more space between the room and the outside for your eye.  Without window coverings, your eye will travel outside, creating the illusion that the room blends into the outside and that the room continues on for more distance than it actually does.
10. Make use of hidden storage – Coffee tables that open into a chest, couches that open to reveal hidden storage areas, and storage under the bed can all double as furniture and storage. This way, the clutter is gone, and you don’t have to have extra space to keep everything.

For help finding the perfect furniture to make your home look bigger, contact me to come in to Levin Furniture at 16960 Sprague Rd, Middleburg Heights, Ohio.  Call or text me at 216-296-3957 to plan a time to come in!