Tips to Decorate a Small Space

If you have a room that is so small you just don’t know what to do with it, you’re in luck. Small rooms can make for second living rooms, a nursery, an office, or any number of other useful things, but decorating them can be difficult. Anything you add seems to make the room feel smaller, because it is. But never fear, there are some things you can do to offset that claustrophobic feeling, by decorating your small room well.

White

There is a reason landlords paint every rented cupboard in London white and call it a bedroom: white feels open. White walls are the basic first step in making a room look bigger. If you are a fan of bold colours, no one is stopping you, but they would be better implemented in statement pieces around the room rather than on the walls. Bold colours can make the room feel cramped without having actually taken up any space.

If you insist on adding some colour to the walls, consider an accent wall. It will give a bold statement and high contrast so the walls don’t entirely close in.

White walls give the illusion of more space by being the most reflective colour. Where dark colours will absorb the light in the room, white will allow it to ‘breathe’, in turn allowing you to breathe. But why is light important?

Lighting

A lot of natural light will allow any small space to feel wider so make sure to open the curtains when you enter that tiny room. If you still need curtains to close, say if you are on the ground floor, you can invest in some sheer curtains to allow light in but nosey eyes out.

If your small space is a retail space, you can add more light to the room by keeping the windows clear and investing in high quality lighting. The brighter the room is the more there is to see.

At home we might not need the big light at night, but you can see about some statement lampshades at Penny Morrison for example, to deliver a more cosy experience when it gets dark. Beautifully crafted bronze, porcelain or even antique ‘coffee pot’ lamps adorned with an individually styled statement lampshade create another element of luxury living.

Storage

Nothing makes the walls close in like clutter. Doesn’t your mind feel cleaner when you do a quick and simple clean up around the room? That glass that was sitting there all afternoon is now gone from your mind and you can concentrate on whatever you want – like nothing, for example.

There are a lot of ways to avoid clutter, the simplest being to have a whip around your room once in a while, but you will find yourself doing it more often in a smaller room. Unless you invest in furniture that has an element of storage to it. Whether you’re looking at a bed, a sofa, a cabinet, etc. make sure it has somewhere for things to go away, out of sight and out of mind.

There is no room for display cases in this tiny space. You are looking for no furniture with glass, but drawers and doors to hide the shambles of whatever you throw in there.