How You Can Make Your Small Room Look Larger

9 tips to make a small room look larger, brighter and more inviting.

“How can I make my small room look larger?”

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As one of Bangladesh’s most in-demand interior design companies, we get this kind of query many times from clients.

Which is why, based on our experience, we are publishing this blog post on how you can make your small room look larger, with home decor techniques like colour management, light play, furniture planning and material selection.

Blog overview

In this blog post on home decor techniques to make your small room look bigger, we will:

First say who should read this blog.
Then go through the 9 decor tips.
And end with some further reading blog post suggestions.

Let’s begin.

Who should read this blog post

Here are a few situations in which this post may prove useful:

You have guests coming over, and you want to make your room look bright, open and inviting.
You bought/rented a smaller home because of their low cost, and now you want the rooms to look larger.
You just want a revamp of your house.

Most of the techniques in this blog post can be easily implemented on your own, making it a good fit even if you don’t want to spend a lot of money consulting with a home decorator or designer.

Now, let us proceed to the actual home decor tips to make a room look bigger.

Cut clutter

This is obvious, isn’t it?

The fewer unnecessary objects in your room, the more open and big the room will look.

Pictures and hangings on walls

Don’t have too many smaller pictures and other hangings on your walls.

Instead, replace them with one large picture and one hanging/accessory that you really like.

Focal point

Find one focal point in the room, and keep most of the furniture near it.

A focal point is a point/place within the room to which the viewer’s eyes are attracted the most.

Have a room ‘walkthrough’

Not being able to see a clear path to walk to the door from important points (like a table or a sofa or a bed) is one reason rooms feel small.

So, clear a walkway through the room so people can walk in and out via the door easily.

Use one or two vertical furniture pieces

Vertical furniture pieces make the room seem taller, and also increases the feeling of movement.

A typical such furniture would be a tall cupboard.

For most furniture, go for low profile

In simple words, apart from maybe one or two vertical furniture pieces, make most of your furniture as close to the ground as possible.

A practical example is: instead of a bed, use a mattress on the floor.

Use colour contrasts

An interior design fact: Lighter colours reflect light.

And if light reflects throughout your room, the room will look brighter and bigger.

Colour scheme to make your room l;ook larger

Good colours that make your room look bigger and inviting are white, blue, and green.

While planning the colour scheme for your room, try to remain within the same colour family…

AND

Have one accent wall (a wall different in colour to the rest of the room).

Choose multifunctional furniture

This is a standard space planning and storage capacity trick used in home design and decor.

Go for multifunctional furniture.

Then you will need fewer pieces of furniture to meet your need, leaving your room more empty and looking bigger.

Examples are:

Sofa rolling out into bed.
Using a chest as a table.
Using folding and nesting tables that can be folded up and put away in a cupboard after use.
Using the window seat (if available) to store things (lowers need for a cupboard space).

Use mirrors

Mirrors can reflect light and make the room appear bigger and more cheerful.

They also reflect the view – this also makes the room look larger.

Place a mirror near a window to ensure sunlight is reflected through the room.
Check which angles are best for creating impression of depth.
Go for an almirah with mirrors on its doors.

Choose open-leg furniture

Open-leg or exposed-leg furniture is basically furniture whose legs are not very highly decorated and are the bare minimum.

This has the “see through” effect, which means a person can see past the furniture to the wall.

Typical examples are beds, sofas, and chairs.

Select light fabrics

Heavier fabrics like wool, velvet and fur can make a room feel crowded and suffocating.

On the other hand, light fabrics like cotton and linen can make the room come alive.

Use innovative lighting

Get creative with the lighting scheme of your room. The objective is to make the room as well-lit as possible, and reflect lights all around your room.