Make a small living room bigger with these simple tricks

If you find yourself with a living area that’s not as big as you would like, there’s plenty you can do to maximise what space you have – without knocking down walls. Follow these three simple tricks and your living room will feel considerably bigger.

Clear the floor

Remember how much bigger the room looked when you first moved in and there was nothing in it? Every piece of furniture that sits on the floor takes away that spacious feel.

We don’t mean you should literally clear the floor completely. But the more of your floor that you can see right up to the walls, the larger your living room will appear. If we can see plenty of skirting board visually, we are tricked into thinking there is more space available. It’s as though anything attached to the walls doesn’t count as ‘furniture’ to our subconscious.

Consider wall-mounted cabinetry and wall-mounted bookshelves. Likewise, you can ditch the entertainment unit and attach your tv to the wall, or install a dedicated shelf.

Minimise your colours

There’s a reason most new homes come pre-painted in tried-and-trusted white. As well as being a blank canvas for buyers, it’s also the easiest way to make a space look bigger.

The same goes for your furniture. A mix of vibrant colours will tend to make a small room seem smaller. Busy colour combinations in your furnishings will only make your space seem cluttered. Stick to a simple palette of similar hues, or go completely monochrome in shades of just one colour to install a sense of calm spaciousness. You can select a neutral and natural colour for your base and brighten it up here and there with small pops of colour.

Stack & Store

You don’t necessarily need all of your furniture out on display taking up space permanently. Finding furniture pieces that stack within each other is a great way to maximise the space you have. Think nested coffee tables and side tables. You can pull them out when you have guests and stack them away the rest of the time.

It also makes a huge difference if you have discreet places to store stuff like throws, extra cushions and so on. Dual-function items like footstools with hidden storage can come to the rescue here. They can even double up as a coffee table if you choose one with a flat top. Just add a large tray and you have a space-saving superhero table/seat/storage combo.

If you have a small combined living and dining space, you might also want to consider a dining table that can be folded away. Or perhaps opt for the classic drop-leaf dining table that can work half-opened against a wall most of the time and opened up into the middle of the room when you have dinner guests.