If you love your tiny home but hate the claustrophobic feeling you get in your tiny family room, this post is for you.
VCG Construction has come up with some family room remodeling tips to make any family room look bigger. These don’t involve demolishing walls (though that is one option), so you can take on any of these creative tips with a friendly budget and minimal disruption. Ready?
1. Paint the walls, trim, and detailing different shades of one color.
How does this make your family room look bigger? It’s simple: Harsh contrasts create hard boundaries that only emphasize the smallness of the space. Instead, various shades of one color (perhaps an off white) create more gentle transitions and a feeling of expansion.
Along similar lines, furnish the room with some pieces that are the same color as your walls, so that these blend with the room’s borders and visually widen the space.
2. Use lots of light — and ditch the drapes.
Natural light opens up any space, so be sure you don’t block windows with furniture. In addition, you may want to keep drapes and blinds off the windows entirely. By allowing a clear view of the outdoors, you add a dimension to the room.
If natural lighting is limited, here’s a different a family room remodeling solution: Decorate with mirrors. There’s a reason small restaurants and stores do this, and it’s to make the place seem bigger than it is.
Lastly, be sure to include more than one type of lighting. Rather than a single overhead light, which draws the eye to one spot, use several lighting elements from different points to widen the line of sight.
3. Use a large, central piece of furniture.
Some homeowners mistakenly believe that using lots of small furniture makes the most of a small family room. Unfortunately, all this does is emphasize the room’s small size, by making all of that furniture look crammed in.
Instead, use one large piece of furniture that fills the room, then hire a contractor to install custom pieces around it. For example, you might have a large couch sprawl across the space, then install custom wall-to-wall shelving around that large piece. Far from making the room seem smaller, the use of a central piece of furniture creates a sense of simplicity and expansiveness.
4. Consider striped flooring and a brightly painted ceiling.
You may not want to use these family room remodeling tips together, but separately either one can enhance the spaciousness of your family room. First, fashion law tells us that pinstripes lengthen the figure — so it makes sense that stripes also lengthen your family room. Striped flooring such as hardwood or patterned carpeting nurtures a sense that the room goes on and on.
Lastly, painting the ceiling a bright color draws the eye upward, creating the illusion of high ceilings.
