How to Make a Room Look Bigger With Flooring
Every home has rooms on the smaller side. Often we just yearn for a quick expansion and the appearance of more space, even if it seems impossible.
By making some of the following changes to your flooring, you can increase the optical size of any room without having to knock down walls or throw away furniture.
- Keep Your Floor Shiny
Keeping your floor shiny is as crucial as choosing the floor colors. To get the best results, you highly recommend you use a professional floor cleaner.
- Diagonal Placement Works Better
Another smart way to create an illusion of a bigger space is to lay the floor in a diagonal pattern. It works better than horizontal and vertical placement. However, the order should be so that the wide part of the pattern faces you when you enter the room. The diagonal pattern tricks the mind and eyes into seeing the space differently, creating an illusion of space.
This trick works for all flooring, from planks to carpets and tiles to marble. But, again, don’t try to make a checkerboard contrast with too many starkly different shades.
- Leave Some Floor Space
This may not be a flooring-related tip, but it is worth mentioning. Some folks think it’s a good idea to add unnecessary clutter by placing too many items on the floor. Unfortunately, the floor is virtually invisible, making the room seem unorganized and cluttered. It is best to limit the number of furniture placed on the floor. Choose sleeker and modern furniture instead of bulky furniture.
- Larger Flooring Materials
More extensive flooring materials can easily make a room feel bigger. Fewer seams between planks and tiles create an open pattern that looks less confining and busy.
Choose wide wood boards that are three inches or more and lay them parallel to the longest wall in the room, as laying boards this way can help elongate a space. Tiles measuring between 12 and 24 inches are ideal for making a room bigger and use grouting that is the same color or close to the tile color to increase the visual look of the floor.
- Put Board Parallel to the Longest Wall
You might skip these tips if your small room had a perfect square layout. But this simple thing can make a big difference if you have a long or narrow space.
A room with a wood board arrange parallelly to the longest wall tend to look more significant than the opposite. This trick works by manipulating our visual perceptions, so even though the room has the same size, our brain sees the first one as a little larger.
- Colors and Consistency
While most interior designers will swear that lighter colors will make the room look bigger, dark wood floors can make the room look bigger.
Using a cool paint color for the walls can help match the effect with dark wood floors. Crown molding in a lighter shade can help the illusion.
Installing a floor with consistent material and color can tie together a home with an open floor plan, creating the illusion of one large room.
Does light or dark flooring make a room look bigger?
You may get surprised to learn that dark wood flooring can help to make your room look bigger. Darker flooring offers an inviting feel and opens up a space.
Whether you choose rich or softer dark colors, they both have advantages in expanding the appearance of a room.
Dark wood is not to be afraid of, and once paired with the right cooling shade for wall color, space really can appear much bigger than it is.
Does painting the ceiling the same color as the walls make the room look bigger?
The ceiling is the often forgotten fifth wall in your room. When redecorating a space, homeowners may not consider the ceiling color as part of their color scheme. But the ceiling plays a considerable role in the room’s overall feel. Choosing a light or a dark color can make the room feel bigger or smaller. The combination of light or dark colors also affects how large or small a room feels.
- Dark Colors
Large rooms with high ceilings often feel unbalanced or cold. Because furniture and flooring occupy less than half of the room, leaving the rest of the space bare.
Paint color can help bring the ceiling down. It fools the eye into thinking the room is smaller and more intimate. Medium to dark and rich, deep colors, such as chocolate brown on the ceiling, can warm up the space. It makes it feel cozy instead of impersonal.
A dark ceiling can become the focal point in a sparsely furnished room. They are taking the eye away from the lack of accessories.
- Light Colors
Small rooms or those with low ceilings can feel cramped and stuffy. Light colors on your ceiling can make these spaces feel more significant.
The trick to effectively opening up a small space is to keep the color contrast between the walls and ceilings to a minimum. For example, a dark blue border with a white ceiling may not enlarge the space.
On the other hand, pale yellow walls with a cream or off-white ceiling will feel light, airy, and more prominent.
- White Ceilings
White gets often used as a ceiling color. It complements almost every shade on the color wheel and works well in most color schemes. White reflects light, brightening the room and making it appear larger.
White also reflects the other colors in the room. For example, if you paint the walls deep red, the ceiling will appear to be a slightly rosy hue.
- Monochromatic
Rooms that use the same colors for ceiling and walls allow the roof to blend with the rest of the room. Depending on your chosen colors, the space can be larger or smaller.
For example, light ceilings and walls make a space feel open and airy, while a dark or rich color like red on ceilings and walls brings everything in. To add drama to a monochromatic color scheme, paint trim and mold a lighter color.
It will add contrast and texture to the room, highlighting architectural features and preventing deeper shades from creating a claustrophobic feel. A modified monochromatic look uses different shades of the same color for walls and ceilings.
It provides a softer, unified effect instead of just one solid color. This is useful in small rooms with low ceilings because the eye isn’t drawn to the low top since there is no stark contrast between the wall and ceiling.
- Sheen
Ceiling paints are specially formulated with an ultra-flat sheen to help hide imperfections. Ceiling paints provide better coverage because they’re thicker than wall paint and are often splatter-resistant to make painting overhead easier.
However, a flat sheen is not your only option because wall paint can get used on the ceiling. Metallic, glossy, and pearlescent effects add intensity by reflecting light and color.
But this is usually best for a large room with high ceilings or a ceiling with few or no imperfections. A glossy or metallic finish in a small space may be too intense, and it will highlight the flaws in your ceiling’s finish.