How To Make Small Rooms Look Bigger [13 Hacks!]

Install, sheer curtains and raise the curtain rod almost to the ceiling. I am telling you it will instantly elevate the look of a room and make it feel welcome to the imperfectly empowered podcast with leading DIY lifestyle blogger on. Where women are inspired with authentic stories and practical strategies to reclaim their hearts and homes by empowering transformation. One imperfect day. At a time today, we’re going to talk about 13 cost-effective design ideas to make small rooms look bigger and transform your home into a relaxing space. Retreat as many of, you know, we just recently wrapped up the renovation in our current fixer upper in the basement. We have sold this home. I’m still currently sitting in the home as I am recording this, but it is under contract. I will be out of here shortly, but this basement renovation. I had to employ all of my design tips and tricks to make it feel spacious yet functional as possible. It is just about as small as you can really get in order to finish a basement and consider it finished square footage. So a lot of these tips played into this current renovation, but I am going to give you lots of examples of ways that I’ve implemented these design ideas over our last several house projects. As a side note. If you click on the link in the YouTube description, if you’re watching on YouTube, or if you are listening via your preferred podcast platform, you definitely want to check out the show notes. The blog post, there is tons and tons of before and after pictures, as well as links to resources and products that will help you implement these design ideas. Let’s start talking about these cost-effective design tips. You do not need to add square footage. Here we go. Tip number one to make small rooms look bigger, convert a standard closet into an open concept design. This idea can be implemented in multiple areas of the house. I’m going to give you a couple examples in this current home, in the master bedroom. We took a standard closet, knocked out the divider in between. It was like a standard bi-fold door, double closet. We knocked out the divider, opened it up from floor to ceiling, and then we framed it with antique barn beams, and then installed a custom. Closet system. We made this concept a little more complicated than you need to, but the reason that this is cost-effective is you are ultimately adding square footage, visually that already exists. Similarly to knocking out walls, right? Knocking out walls is not even on this list. And that is because it is. Right. I want to give you things that you may have never thought of, and you definitely want to read slash listen slash watch to the end for my number one tip, but this one visually add square footage that already exists without having to pay to actually add square footage, simply by knocking out the walls and creating an open concept design. We’ll add visual. Depth width. It will make a space feel bigger. Another place that we have done this twice now in two different homes is we have knocked out a closet in a hallway and created an open concept design. We did this same thing at our second fixer. As we did here, but what we did in this current house is there was a hallway closet. That was, oh my goodness. It was probably 24 inches, deep, 18 to 24 inches deep, maybe 20. The point is we made it more shallow. I installed a pullout pantry behind it, and then we built a wall on the other side. And created an open concept drop zone. So there’s baskets along one side, there are hooks for jackets, backpacks, the baskets hold shoes, hats. When we had babies, it was our diaper changing station. So the idea is this take an existing closet and either build something into it. Like we did a pull up pantry and gave ourselves pens more storage in our kitchen, or just simply open it up. And if it’s a deeper closet, consider creating a three sided open concept design. This is what we did in our second fixed repor. Meaning there are hooks on all three sides of the closet in this particular home. And the picture that is included in the show notes is of this house where we actually made this closet more shallow and just used it for hook. Coats, et cetera. Tip number two, create vertical storage with floating shelves. One of the simplest design ideas is to think vertically, this is true of a kitchen. This is true of very nearly any room to make it feel bigger is build up vertical storage provides a focal point that draws the eye up. And also opens up the floor, making small rooms feel larger, a side note, make sure to neatly arranged decor items on shelves for added visual appeal and consider baskets, different ways to make that storage look more aesthetically pleasing. One example of this in this current home, when we were looking at putting an entertainment center in the family room, we knocked out walls, did the whole opening it up thing, but any entertainment furniture was going to be way too big in the space. So what we did is we built in a corner cabinet for our TV. There are doors at the bottom. For storage and there are shelves for, I mean, willing to use DVDs and more isn’t that crazy. Like even when we built this, we were still using a DVD player and now we’re really not, but there is a speaker there’s a portable speaker that sits on that shelf. The point of this, we built vertical storage into the. To keep the floor plan more open coroner storage, vertical corner storage, especially will help keep a room feel bigger because those corners often end up being empty space. This concept works really well on any earner in any area of the home. Like I said, this is what we did in a family room, in a living room, consider creating floating shelves for toy and book storage and leave the least used items on the top shelf, your stuff that still needs stored somewhere. But the stuff that you don’t use as frequently consider putting it on the top shelf, be sure to click on the link again, that’s included in the show notes for some TV stand corner storage ideas. Another place that we use this design concept was in our master bedroom. I am a lover of shoes. I can’t deny it. First world problem. 100%. I have too many shoes. I very routinely try to purge and give away shoes. I do love shoes. I’m not much of a fashionista, but I have always been a shoe lover. So. I have vertical shoe storage. I built in a vertical shoe shop floor to ceiling in our open concept closet, but I also built for loading shelves, hung floating shelves on my bedroom wall for my. What’s nice about this is that you can space your floating shelves exactly. As you need to, in order to provide the right height for your boots. I happen to use 150 year old barn beams, the same barn beams that we framed the open-concept closet. But this could apply to anything you could put folded pants, you could put folded shirts, you could put persists, really anything you want. Get it off the floor and put it on vertical floating shelves. Tip number three, add a large light colored area rug to make a small room look bigger. The rug design idea goes both ways. And I’m going to give you some examples of how this can go a couple of ways. So not only can a well chosen area rug add a stylish accent, but it can ground a room while also making it. Bigger in order to optimize this open sense of space, choose a rug that has lighter colors, as opposed to darker. As darker colors will make a room feel smaller, albeit cozier. So if you have a really, really big room, super light, bright, and airy, it might actually help ground the space to choose a large area rug that is darker than. Maybe Boulder tones to help ground the sitting area. We kind of did this in our last basement. It was a 1000 square foot basement in our second fixer-upper and there was an entertainment area where there was a TV and a sectional sofa. We put a large light colored rug there to help define that space. But arguably a rug in this case does not help a room feel bigger because it’s already a massive room. It just helped define that particular area in our master bedroom. However, the floor is stained dark. As a side note, if you need help choosing the best farmhouse style wood floor stain, highly recommend that you visit the blog search floor stain. This is one of the most visited posts of my entire website and this particular flooring color combination is on there. That’s what prompted that post in the first place, but it is a darker floor. The light colored rugs in our bedroom actually helped to brighten up the room because of the dark wood flooring. And there was a lot of open floor space in the master bed. Now our girl’s room. There’s two twin beds in this room. It’s cozy our girls share room and it’s not a super big bedroom. And it’s the same color floor stain. As the master bedroom. I originally had a light rug running down the center of their room between the two beds. Interestingly, in this case, I ended up removing the. And it instantly made the room feel bigger, but here is the difference between the two rooms. Our master bedroom had a lot more of the open dark floor space. The lighter large rug in our master bedroom actually made it feel bigger and lighter in the girls room. However, there’s not that much exposed floor and their bedroom. Is already lighter and brighter because of the white shiplap on the walls. They’re white bedspreads, they’re white beds, they’re white dresser. So it already felt a little bit bigger by adding one more thing to the floor. It actually made it feel a little bit smaller. So I’m kind of giving you two examples here with the rugs. You just have to see the room, assess the space, but that’s an example of the difference in the two bedrooms and how. One adding the rug made it feel bigger, lighter. The other one actually made it feel a little bit cramped. Hopefully that helps as you assess a room and determine what a rug make this room feel bigger or a more cramped. Tip number four, how to make small rooms look bigger. Tip number four is remove everything from the walls. Except one statement piece. If a room is exceptionally large, then one of the easiest ways to make that space feel cozier is to add a large picture wall in the opposite manner. However, if you have a smaller room, you want to assess your wall space. And take a look and consider how much is actually hanging on the wall. Removing decor from the wall 10, make a small space, feel larger and more open, a great way to start when you assess your walls and you have a blank. Choose one eye-catching statement piece to highlight one piece of wallet and remove everything else. If you can’t choose just one piece, say you have three kids. Like we do try to arrange pictures in oddly numbered groups, preferably in groups of three, this is a design rule that you will see pretty much in any design tip resource on. But the bottom line is you want to arrange items in groups of three or five. Let me give an example of this. Let’s say you have two kids. And do you want to adhere to the groups of three rule? Here’s one of the things that you could do, but one large, what is it? 16 by 24. I’m actually looking at it right now. I can’t oh, 16 by 24. Isn’t that right? I don’t remember what the actual dimension is, but a bigger picture of the entire family. And then add an 11 by 14 on one side of your kid and then kid number two. And 11 by 14 on the other side. So you’ve got one large family picture in the middle and then one slightly smaller picture of each kid on either side. Again, I’m staring at our family picture wall and we have one large family picture of us. And then we currently have three children, but we are adopting our fourth. So. I then have the two photos on either side and our fourth child, our son who’s coming through adoption. I have a picture of the Samoan flag because that is where we’re adopting from the Pacific island of Samoa. So in this case, I’ve arranged a wall in a group of five. If you’re going to do two pictures on a wall, I recommend either putting them directly over top of each other or slightly off centering them, meaning you would do one here. And then one slightly off to the side, evenly spaced on the wall. My point is this too much on the wall can make it feel cluttered and small. Over beds. I recommend one piece of wall art. In this current bedroom, we have a shadow box with my bouquet, from our wedding, and then we have a candle sconce on either side. Again, note groups of three, the girls each have one piece of wall art above their bed. Caleb, his bed is up against a pallet wall, so he just has one like Navy anchor hanging beside his bed groups of three. One large statement piece or a group of five is the general rule of thumb. You have tried it all worried. You will never lose the extra weight or reclaim the energy you once enjoyed, want to achieve that loss without spending hours in a gym or eliminating entire food groups from your day. Well, now you can in the virtual faster way to fat loss with Ana my six week fitness nutrition program, you will learn how to pair effective 30 minute workouts with all natural evidence-based nutritional strategies to leverage what you eat. And when you eat to reset your metabolism and burn fat fast, even that stubborn belly fat, I am a dual certified nurse practitioner passionate about teaching sustainable strategies to promote fat loss and prevent disease. I have cheered on thousands of clients who have done just that with the faster way program in my six week program, the average client currently shed seven inches of body fat, 93% report, more energy. 89% state that their mental health has improved 100% of clients report. They feel this program is sustainable. Curious to try the program, but not sure if the strategies will work for you. Try the faster way strategies for free head to www.hammersandhugs.com and sign up for my free seven day. Accelerator course today and start your own transformation story. Tip number five, install sheer curtains, four inches from the ceiling. One of the easiest ways to make a small room feel bigger, not to mention brighter and give it a whole new feel is to install sheer Curt. And raise the curtain rod almost to the ceiling. I am telling you it will instantly elevate the look of a room and make it feel bigger. A standard recommendation is to install your curtain, rod four inches from the. Sheer curtains allow more light to come through more natural daylight to come through. And they also still provide a barrier, meaning this, if you’re really antsy about people being able to look into your house and you really want to have a curtain, I recommend a semi sheer curtain when you’re standing outside, looking in it’s very, very difficult to see through semi sheer curtains, as opposed to like a true shear. You’re still going to be able to see through even from outside of a semi sheer, however, It’s not as easy to see through and still provides a lot more light coming into your room. Try to stick to lighter, neutral colors for your curtains. And again, consider a sheer material to help the space feel more airy. I included in the show notes, hammers and hugs.com or in the description here in YouTube. I linked my very, very favorite semi sheer curtains. They kind of have. Fo linen appearance. And I will definitely use these again when we build they’re the perfect, they add a little bit of color. They’re not a true white, but they have a semi sheer material. Absolutely love them. They’re from Wayfair. I have linked them. There’s pictures of them also on the notes or on the blog. Tip number six, eliminate clutter with more efficient storage. We’ve already talked about vertical storage, but there are other ways to add creative storage to your house. When I say other ways, I mean the list goes on and on. We could probably do a separate podcast just on organization ideas, but eliminating clutter is one of the easiest ways to make your home. Less is more consider creative storage solutions to add visual appeal and practical utility such as floating shelving. Like we talked about under bed storage boxes. So our current bed, the sides come really low to the ground. And I think we only have five inches of clearance and I found these really awesome, huge, flat, like a zip-up storage boxes that we. I have put under our bed. You could put sweaters in knees, you could put clothing, really of any kind belts, accessories in ours. We actually have personal items. Your books, keepsakes that Zach wanted. He has some on his side. I have some on my side. Don’t forget about storage underneath the bed wall baskets. I keep my hairdryer and hair spray and stuff like that on a basket that I mounted on the wall beside my dresser to actually eliminate clutter from the top of my dresser. This would also be a great idea in a bathroom. We have hanging Mason jars from a piece of reclaimed wood. That again, we try to keep the clutter off of the sink. Custom design closet systems. So, so many ways to get creative about storage. But again, notice everything that I mentioned with the exception of the under the bed storage. A lot of it is vertical, right? It’s utilizing that vertical space. And of course you can try to make it look pretty. My, um, basket beside my dresser is not particularly pretty, but it’s very effective and it keeps clutter off of my dresser. Tip number seven. Huge difference with this tip and relatively cost-effective paint the walls, a lighter, brighter color color. Psychology has been well studied and offers a great way to promote a sense of joy rest and wellbeing, but they also make a significant difference. In the sense of space. Now I mentioned painting the walls and the color examples. I’m going to give you our paint, but the same thing is true of wallpaper. Maybe you’re a big wallpaper fan. I actually am a wallpaper fan. I love texture. I am not just a painted walls, kind of a girl, but this same concept is true of wallpaper as well. Consider lighter and also consider simpler patterns or patterns that are. That leave a lot of lights space in the wallpaper. The overall tone of the wallpaper should be lighter. If the goal is to make a room feel bigger and airier when you look at it, it should appear light to you. Shades of white light gray or blue light greens or yellow can really help brighten and lighten a space, making it feel. Let me give you a couple pink colors. The list goes on and on, but two of my favorite white paint colors are simply white by Benjamin Moore and alabaster by Sherwin Williams. These are both slightly warmer. White, simply white is a truer white than Alabama. Simply wait is also what we have done. All of our trim in light gray, blue paint, colors, agreeable gray, and silver strand by Sherwin Williams for reference are both of our basements were painted in silver strand. It is one of my favorite colors. It is light, bright, airy. It leans anywhere from gray to blue. To green. It is an incredibly versatile color and it is in my opinion. Perfect. For a basement, obviously we’ve used it twice and I’m a huge fan of it. My favorite green paint is sea salt by Sherwin-Williams. It’s a really pretty foamy green. Does that make sense? I don’t even know why that came to mind, but it’s a really, really pretty light grayish green, and it can even pull a little bit of blue. Yellow paint color ideas include Philadelphia cream by Benjamin Moore and morning sun by Sherwin-Williams. I have not personally used either of these two, but they are really, really popular yellow paint colors that aren’t like over the top. Bright yellow, almost more creamy, creamy yellows tip number eight, place, small lamps or tall and narrow lamps on side tables. Let’s first talk about nightstands. If you have a small bedroom. Our bedroom here in this house. It’s not super small, but we have a king size bed, which instantly makes the bedroom feel smaller. And we did not have room for both of us to have the nightstand that was included with the set. So on my side, is this really small, like 12 inch round table with a tiny little. Like nightlight on it and it works. It really works in the space because it doesn’t feel too big for the area, depending on how tall your ceilings are as well. A tall narrow lamp can also make a space feel bigger. And again, as because as drawing the eye upward, if you are concerned that a space feels too small, do not buy bulky lamps, like the roundabout. Try to get ones that look skinny, it will make the room feel bigger. Make sure that your lamps are an appropriate size for the space of the room. Tip number nine, hang an oversized mirror. Mirrors are a great reflector of light, big ones work the best you can hang a big one over a sofa. You can do a floor to ceiling, like a massive mirror. Like we have here in our sunroom. Another tip for a bedroom is a really, really big oversized mirror above a dresser. Again, they reflect a lot of light and they make a space feel much bigger. Oversized mirrors are an excellent way to make a space feel bigger. Albeit not necessarily as cost-effective. Well, let me throw that in there. Oversize mirrors can be very expensive. If you want to get super creative, you can try buying foam glass. There is such a thing and building a frame for it. It will serve the same purpose. It’s not going to look quite as authentic, but you can still create a really nice appearing mirror for relatively cheap. If you want to give it a go tip, number 10. Install quarter round for baseboards. This is something that we did in the basement. So the basement ceiling in this fixer upper, unlike our second one, our second one was a newer home. It was a standard basement. It was an eight foot ceiling. But in this house, this house was, I think it might’ve been sixties or forties. I don’t remember. But this basement, the ceiling height was less than eight feet. The bottom of the rafters. Oh, I actually forget how high it is, but it’s definitely less than eight feet. So in order to give the illusion of height, we installed quart around, along the base, instead of a traditional base board, this does make the walls appear taller because you were removing several inches of baseboard along the bottom. It really worked remarkably well again, you can take a look at the pictures, but consider installing court around in a smaller space. Along the bottom instead of a traditional base. Tip number 11, this one’s a little bit more work, but it looks amazing. Open up the ceiling. What do you mean by open up the ceiling? Well, in this basement, again, this is what I did by opening up the ceiling and doing an exposed joist ceiling. We added approximately eight inches. So the overall height of the ceiling, what we did is we tore out all of the insulation. If you have dry wall on your basement ceiling, you can tear that out. And we exposed all of the wires, all of the Joyce, and we sprayed it all white. Now, for those of you really interested in the details, we. Recess like can lighting in the Joyce between the Joyce. And then before we put the light bulbs in, we sprayed the whole. From a code standpoint for anybody wondering, at least in our area, you were allowed to have exposed electric wires. They just could not run beneath the joints. So you had to drill through the Joyce to run any wires or run them along the inside of the Joyce. So as long as they’re not below or they’re tied up against, so you remove the insulation again, not as energy efficient pros and cons to both. And noise could also be an issue. You could consider that depending on the flooring in the space above, but in this basement, it added significant height and a sense of depth, and it makes it feel so much more open by opening up the ceiling. I also have an article on the blog, 44 basement ideas for your seat. A lot of people wonder what should I do with the ceiling when they do a basement renovation? Well, I have an article on my blog that is 44 basement ceiling ideas. You definitely want to check that out. Certainly check out the pictures of this basement renovation. If you want to consider the open Joyce look, it really is a cool look. And you can do this in any space. Really an attic bedroom or an attic room would be another great space to do this. Then tip number 12. Use a semi-gloss paint finish. The sheen of a paint can drastically change the brightness of the finish. And then ultimately of the room semi-gloss finishes will generally make a pink color appear lighter and brighter because of reflects more or less. They’re also easier to wipe down now, satin is sort of the standard finish for most wall paint. You will usually hear the recommendation of satin if it is a particularly small room, however, and there is very little or no natural. As was true in this basement and the bathroom that we built down there. I used a semi-gloss paint because it reflects more light. Again. It’s also easier to wipe down in a playroom like the basement. I don’t regret that choice. Interestingly, I did not pay attention when my husband and his buddy bought the paint to spray the ceiling, they got a flat paint. I would not have done that. Caught it too late. I would have definitely done a semi-gloss white paint on the ceiling as well. Again, it reflects more light. I miss that. So if you happen to notice that on the pictures, I would have done a brighter sheen on the ceiling as well. So consider a semi-gloss finish in a very small room. Tip number 13, possibly my number one tip for making a small room look bigger, lighting, lighting, lighting lighting is the key to giving any room that ambiance that you are looking for. There are so many creative lighting ideas. But what I specifically want to talk about right now is the idea of color, temperature of light bulbs. The color temperature of a light bulb is noted by the measurement Kelvin. It is the K that you see at the end of the number on the box. So you might see, it might say 3,500 K that is noting the color temperature of the light bulb. For a large room, a really large room that gets tons and tons of natural light. Maybe you want to warm it up a little bit, warming it up means you are going to pull more yellow from the light bulb. It can help the space feel cozier warmer. Again, it’s going to pull yellow, just be very aware of that depending on what your pink colors are. And it is less bright, warmer, light bulb. Are typically less than 3,500 K. So you will see 3,500 K or less a whiter, brighter light, the brightest light bulbs. They almost have a hint of blue. Again, be conscious of that, depending on the color of your paint are typically 5,000 K or more. My recommendation, my personal theme. Is what they call daylight temperature. These light bulbs range from 3,500 to 5,000 K. I linked on the show now. The ones that I personally recommend. These are my favorite. They are 4,000 K dimmable led light bulbs. So you’ve got the energy efficiency with the ability to dim the light for a more intimate gathering. Or if you want to bring the lights down, make it feel a little bit cozier. You can do that, but then you have the option of going up the whole way to a 4,000 K and Brayden. Uh, the room considerably, it’s a neutral color temperature, which is ideal. If I had to pick one or the other, I would go warmer than I would brighter. The blue led light bulbs. To me, I feel like I’m in an institution or the hospital or something. They’re too bright to me. I think 4,000 is the perfect middle ground. It’s a more neutral. Bright white, certainly going for led is going to give you that energy efficiency, these particular ones that I linked are also the vintage Edison style, which is great because we have a lot of open lighting in our house and it also gives a visual aesthetic to it as well. You do not need to add square footage to a room to make it feel bigger. I hope at least one of these relatively cost-effective design ideas will have. You to transform your home into a relaxing spacious retreat. Thanks for listening to this episode of the imperfectly empowered podcast. I would love to hear your thoughts from today. Head to your preferred podcasting platform and give the show an honest review and let me know what you think. Remember, you cannot be redefined only redeveloped one imperfect day at a time. Your story matters and you are loved.