How to Make a Small Apartment Feel Bigger

Why small rooms feel smaller than they are

A room feels cramped when the eye keeps hitting obstacles: furniture that blocks the view across the room, dark corners, cluttered surfaces and too many competing colours. Most fixes work by doing one of three things: showing more floor and wall, adding light, or reducing visual noise.

1. Clear the floor first

Visible floor reads as space. Before anything else, remove whatever lives on the floor without needing to: laundry, shoes, boxes, stacks of things waiting for a home. Give them one. Our small apartment storage ideas lists places you may not have used yet.

2. Keep the sight line to the window open

Stand in the doorway. If something tall sits between you and the window, the room stops there. Put low furniture near the window and tall furniture against the walls beside or behind the door.

3. Light the corners

One ceiling light leaves the edges of a room dim, which pulls the walls in. Add two or three lamps at different heights so light reaches the corners. Plug-in wall lights and rechargeable lamps need no wiring. Warm white bulbs in living areas feel comfortable; a brighter, cooler bulb suits a desk.

4. Use one large mirror, placed with purpose

A mirror opposite or beside a window bounces daylight deeper into the room and doubles the view. One large mirror does more than several small ones. Lean a heavy mirror against the wall with an anti-tip strap if you cannot hang it.

5. Choose furniture to scale

Deep, bulky pieces eat a small room. Look for slimmer arms, a lower back and visible legs, which let you see the floor continuing underneath. Leave a clear walkway of roughly 30 inches (75 cm) where you can. More on this in how to choose furniture for a small apartment.

6. Go up the walls

Floor-to-ceiling shelving stores more and draws the eye upward, which makes the ceiling feel higher. Hang curtains close to the ceiling and let them fall to the floor for the same effect.

7. Calm the colour scheme

You do not need white walls. You do need restraint: two or three main colours, repeated. Furniture close in tone to the walls recedes; a strong contrast makes every piece stand out as a separate object.

8. Clear the surfaces

Every counter, table and shelf that is half empty makes the room feel under control. Group what stays out on a tray, and put the rest behind a door or in a lidded box.

9. Mark out zones in a studio

It sounds backwards, but dividing a studio makes it feel larger, because the room becomes several places instead of one crowded one. A rug under the seating, an open bookcase at the foot of the bed or a ceiling-mounted curtain is enough.

Common mistakes

• Pushing every piece of furniture against the walls. Pulling the sofa forward a little can improve the walkway behind it.
• Buying storage before decluttering. You end up storing things you do not want.
• Using many small rugs. One larger rug that the front legs of the furniture sit on ties the area together.

What to do next

Work through the room in the order above: floor, sight lines, light. Those three are free or cheap and do most of the work. For the full picture, see the small apartment living guide.