How to Make a Room Look Bigger

You don’t have to be a professional interior designer or home stager to learn how to maximize your living space. In fact, just understanding the basics in choosing the right paint, furniture, lighting, and items to fill up a room can have a tremendous effect on the quality of your time spent there. Just because the square footage of a particular room is small doesn’t mean that you have to feel like you’re living in a limited amount of space. Let’s explore some simple and approachable tactics that professional designers use to learn how to make a room look bigger. 

How to Make a Room Look Bigger with Paint

You can’t change the room size of your home, office, or creative space, but you can perform tricks on the eye by learning what colors make a room look bigger and brighter.

The most reliable color choice for making a small space appear larger is white. White paint’s pigmentation makes it the most reflective color to light. This allows for a small space to feel wider, taller, and generally more open and bright.

Using the same shade of white or off-white to paint the walls and ceiling enhances the feeling that the room is taller than it actually is. The added bonus of a white painted room to make a room look bigger is that white paint projects cleanliness and minimalism, both qualities that make a room seem larger than it actually is. 

While white paint is the easy go-to, it’s not the only option when determining how to make a small room appear much larger. Using a pale baby blue, blush pink, lavender, or sage green you’ll achieve the same sense of serenity that comes with white paint, only with the excitement of color. 

Things to consider when choosing what color to paint a room to make it look bigger:  

The Orientation of the Room

Knowing whether your room faces North, South, East, or West can make a difference when it comes to design choices. No need to panic though, as this isn’t usually common knowledge or listed in the specs of your home. Simply use the compass on your smartphone and point it toward the largest window in the room. Whichever direction the needle is facing will tell you the orientation of your room. 

North-facing rooms get the least amount of light, so soft colors with yellow undertones would be a great fit. 

You’ll get a ton of sunlight throughout the day if your room is facing South, making your choices to create a larger, more open space more versatile. Experiment with cooler tons of grays, greens, or even a bold teal. 

Sunlight through the windows in the morning, but little to no natural light in the afternoon means your room is facing East. Choose warm undertone colors to create depth. 

Green shades and neutral tones benefit from the gorgeous glow of afternoon sunlight that will hit a West-facing room without oversaturating the space or diminishing its appearance in size.

The Size and Shape of a Room

Not all rooms are built the same, therefore, not all rooms painted a particular color will necessarily deliver the same effect to the space just because of the color choice. Some rooms we'd prefer to make look bigger are awkwardly shaped, needing a little extra thought when it comes to color planning. A square room will benefit from being painted the same color from top to bottom. Yet, a room that is narrow and long will appear and feel larger if a colored accent wall of a darker shade covers the far wall. 

The Details are in the Decor

Experimenting with how to make a room look larger with paint is only part of the battle of making a little, enclosed space feel big. The furniture design and placement, arrangement of artwork and wall coverings, and the overall flow of the room offer strategic options in determining how to make a small room look bigger. 

When it comes to furniture placement, most people will push their tables or sofas up against the wall because it provides not only more walking space. While this seems like the logical choice, it’s actually making the space feel more confined. Instead, leaving a gap between the wall and the back of the couch, or avoiding having all shelving against the wall can trick the eye into sensing the room as airier, freer, and open. 

Other ways that furniture and room decor choices are essential when considering how to make a small room look bigger are to choose pieces with specific features. If the goal is to create the illusion that the room has more space than it does, use this checklist when furniture shopping: 

• Tables and chairs with visible legs: streamlined, modern pieces that sit lower to the ground but have an open leg design feature that allows light and air to not only circulate above the item, but also below it. This creates a sense of movement and openness. 
• Bookcases and shelves with open backs: floating shelves on the walls are great decor choices to keep up the minimal, modern, and open aesthetic. Using open-backed bookcases as room dividers is another trick to keep the line of sight in the room extended, appearing to be larger than it is. 
• Glass top tables: again, allowing light to travel through and for the eye to see more of your space, from bottom to top provides the breathing room needed in enclosed spaces. 
• Multifunctional pieces: tabletops or ottomans that can function as both a piece of furniture and storage space can make a huge difference in eliminating a sense of clutter. Items you don’t use daily can be stored inside multifunctional furniture pieces, making your small room maximize the space. 
• Decorate with accent mirrors: mirrors create the illusion of depth, so using mirrors as wall decor is an excellent approach to tricking your brain into thinking there’s more space in the room than there actually is. Angling mirrors toward a room’s focal point or placing a mirror near a window to absorb the natural light source are easy ways to make your small room look bigger with decor. 

Get a Free Quote For Rental Furniture in North Carolina

Do you need furniture to help decorate your small room to make it look bigger? contact Executive Furniture Leasing today! We can offer you budget-friendly rental furniture packages that will certainly spruce the rooms in your home or rented space. To learn more about short-term and long-term leasing, call us at   336-851-1351 or fill out the form below! There’s no reason your small room needs to appear small, we offer modern and versatile furniture that will help you create the illusion you want to make your small room look and feel bigger!