ROOM DESIGNING - MAKE YOUR ROOM APPEAR LARGER

If you have smaller rooms then you can make it look big by the use of different colour schemes and different designs that will fool the eye and create the illusion of a bigger room. Follow the following tips.

Make your room appear bigger with Colour

• The first and foremost guideline is to use light colours. Light colours reflect light, while dark colours absorb light, making the room look and feel smaller.
• If your colours are already dark, try to move the darker colours to a 'background' role while maximizing your neutral white or ivory. Here are some examples. For walls, paint the main portions a light shade of one of your colours, and use the dark colours in a border or painted trim.
• Paint your wall trim and moldings a lighter colour than your walls. This will give a 3-D effect - lighter objects appear closer while darker or shadowed objects appear further away. When you paint your moldings a lighter colour, the wall appears further back - thus making your room appear bigger.
• For your fabrics, go for prints that use light backgrounds. In the bedroom, use your darker colours for valance, tiebacks, table scarves, accent pillows, and bedcovers; and make the more prominent draperies, table covers, and sheets in your lighter colours.

Furniture Arrangement

• With proper furniture arrangement you can make your room appear larger. Set some of your larger furniture pieces at a diagonal. This works because the longest straight line in any given room is it's diagonal. When you place your furniture at an angle, it leads the eye along the longer distance, rather than the shorter wall. As an added bonus, you often get some additional storage space behind the piece in the corner, too!
• Angle your bed so that it is coming out of a corner. Usually one of the corners opposite the door is best. This also gives you more available wall space for dressers and bedside tables. If you have a corner that your furniture looks lost in, bring it out at an angle. This will help soften the edges of your room and guide the eye around.
• Choose less furniture's but large ones. In other words, instead of choosing a smaller sofa, loveseat, chair, coffee table, and end tables to crowd into your living room, cut back and upscale. Choose a larger set, but use only the sofa, chair, and one end table.
• Instead off covering the walls with all your pictures, choose a few of the larger pieces or arrangements and arrange them to compliment your furniture placement. The result will be that it will pull the attention toward the large furnishings, and away from the actual small size of the room.