Making your home feel bigger might seem like an impossible task. But with a few clever tricks and tips on storage and décor, you’d be surprised how much space you can reclaim.
Space-making Furniture
Unless you totally embrace a minimalist lifestyle, you’re bound to have a certain amount of clutter. It’s all those little things that get on top of you and make a room feel smaller than it needs to.
Storage furnishings go a long way towards making your house feel bigger. Things like coffee tables with lifting tops, or end tables with drawers or shelves. There are also storage footstools, or decorative chests you can also use as seating. They’re lovely in a sunny bay window on a lazy afternoon. Furniture like this comes in lots of different styles to fit most decor styles, and are great for hiding away TV remotes, games controllers, spare batteries and cables, or for storing magazines and coffee table books.
If the bedrooms feel overcrowded with possessions, bring in some extra drawers. A drawer tower in the wardrobe can add extra storage for folding clothes, accessories, or shoes. You can create extra floor space in children’s rooms by using raised beds or bunk beds, or ottoman style beds with a lifting mattress for older children.
Using Hidden Spaces
Hidden spaces in a house are often hiding in plain sight. Such as up the walls. Most people can find a stretch of wall for a few extra shelves, and if your walls are already covered in art or photos, you could add narrow shelves over or around a doorway. If you have cottage style decor, a faux recessed doorway might fit right in.
Other hidden spaces we tend to overlook when it comes to storage include underneath kitchen cabinets and that cramped space under the stairs. If the space beneath your kitchen cabinets is clean and dry, fit hinged or sliding doors in place of the standard kickboards and you’ll create acres of space for items that don’t need much height. Think brooms and mops, boxes or board games, racquets and bats, even bakeware and large roasting tins that don’t see much use.
Other places to get creative with shelves include inside alcoves, on the end of a kitchen cabinet, inside your wardrobe door to corral belts, scarves, or ties, or above the bathroom door for spare towels or a pretty basket for beauty products.
Seasonal Storage
If you’re still feeling like your possessions have better use of your home than you, consider taking a seasonal approach to self storage.
This idea is fast gaining ground, especially for those of us with smaller houses or flats. With a self storage unit (lots of different sizes available), you sort your possessions into seasonal use, then put what you don’t need for a few months into store. Garden furnishings, summer clothing, kids’ outdoor toys, during the winter, then swap for all the things you don’t need during summer. It makes much more space at home and has the added advantage of making things feel new and fresh again when you retrieve them.
Space-Making Décor Tips
Interior designers use all kinds of tricks of the trade to make a room seem more spacious. Here are a few things to try:
- Wall lights in place of table or floor lamps. Choose sconces you can swing out so you can change the direction or angle of the light.
- Sliding doors: the door slides along the wall rather than swinging out into the room, creating more usable floor space.
- Cosy armchairs instead of a sofa. There’s no law that says you must have a sofa. Chairs are more versatile in terms of where they fit and are easier to slot into smaller spaces.
- Avoid small rugs. Even in small rooms, a larger rug may work better than a small one as small rugs break up the floor area.
- Use mirrors. They scatter light around the room and the reflection creates an illusion of space.
- Limit your colour palette so the room doesn’t feel too busy.
- Furniture on legs. Bulky items that sit flat on the floor cast deeper shadows, whereas those that are raised up a little let your eye travel further along the floor, making it seem like there’s more space.
While you might not be able to physically push back the walls for more space, thankfully there are one or two simple things that can help. Whether you go for décor and style tricks or practical decluttering with better home storage or a self storage unit, anything that makes your home feel bigger is worth a shot.
If you have already decided you need to move house then here are tips to help you make your house look as if it is worth more.
