Decorating Small Spaces: Tips to make your home inviting and functional, no matter the square footage

Small scale living is as popular today as ever, especially in urban centers where location often takes precedence over square footage. With the popularity of apartment living on the rise, more and more individuals find themselves navigating the tightrope that is decorating a small space so that it has their personal style without making their home feel cramped and cluttered.

Our urban apartment dwellers aren’t alone when it comes to needing to know how to decorate smaller spaces. Vacation condos and guest houses require the same skills and finesse when it comes to decorating. Those in single family homes often benefit from knowing how to decorate small as well so they’re prepared for when it comes time to decorate studies, guest rooms, bathrooms and other rooms that might have a smaller footprint than the rest of the home.

There are numerous benefits to keeping a smaller home, including having an easier to clean and maintain space where you can put your time and money toward quality over quantity. Updates are more affordable and maintenance is a breeze compared to an oversized home with space that will more often collect dust than be used.

Small scale living certainly is a wonderful method. However, you have to decorate with intentionality in order to create a successfully styled and functional home. Space is a premium and oversized furniture, cluttered floors, and busy walls can make your home seem smaller than its actual dimensions. When you consciously evaluate each piece, including furniture, decor and the  placement of items, you can side step the negatives associated with small spaces. When you’re ready to furnish or decorate your entire home or even just a smaller room within your home, remember the following five tips for selecting and placing items to help make it look larger and more spacious.

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Tip 1:  Utilize Lighting

To make your space look larger, draw attention to windows and light spaces. This can be accomplished by focusing decor to areas accompanied with windows and also by adding accent lighting for significant pieces. When attention is directed toward windows, the outside is connected to the room and serves as a subconscious way of artificially increasing the room’s square footage. Hanging plants, eye-catching curtains, and sunlight friendly wall art are all excellent ways to draw attention to the windows and natural light you have in your room. If it is appropriate for the layout and use of the room, consider placing seating or other frequently used pieces of furniture such as a drink cart near or under a window.

 While not directly next to the window, mirrors can enhance the focus on your room’s windows and natural light, with a few requirements. Mirrors hung across from a window reflect the view and almost provide you with a second outdoor outlet within the same room.

Before you run out and buy that perfect mirror, first ask yourself these three questions:

• Is there an appropriate space to mount the mirror opposite the window?

• What direction would the mirror face? If it would face North or South, that’s great. East and West facing mirrors opposite a window can catch excessive light at sunrise and sunset, creating glare in your space.

• When evaluated independently from the window, does the best decor plan for the wall in question include a mirror? If a seating area with floating shelves, artwork, or any plan that would be detracted from by the addition of a mirror fits your space better, take that direction. The mirror should work for its own space first and foremost and then compliment the opposite window secondarily.

  If your room lacks natural light but you want to apply a targeted approach of lighting your space to make it appear larger, consider adding accent lights near statement pieces of artwork or furniture. The added lighting should reinforce the focus on positive space where you want guests to direct their attention. It will also enhance the distinction between the positive and negative space in your room, making both appear larger. While it may be tempting to incorporate this negative and empty space between items, by leaving it open you create breathing room between areas of your home, thus making it feel larger as guests “take it all in”.
  

  

  
  

Popular accent lighting methods including overhead lights targeted at illuminating specific pieces of wall art or shelves and wall sconces placed singly or as a pair around a focal point. Single sconces can illuminate hallways and transitional spaces while beds, windows, artwork, and larger furniture such as a couch or main seating area are all excellent placement ideas for a wall sconce pair. If you’re looking to add decorative and functional lighting to your space through wall sconces but are hesitant to take on the electrical aspect of your project, consider a pair of LED battery operated lights. These easy-install styles are growing in popularity and usually have a back plate that simply screws into the wall, eliminating the need to run any wire to your lights.

Tip 2: Draw Attention Upwards

One way to minimize the focus you, and your guests, put on the footprint of a room is by drawing attention to the height of the space. An easy mental trick to utilize, when a room seems larger vertically, it also appears larger horizontally, or in square footage. When selecting goods for your room, ask yourself if there is a taller option. Go for the standard bookcase instead of the low and long unit. Check out floor lamps instead of table top models. When it comes to plants, choose taller floor plants or indoor trees. If your room has windows or glass doors that you plan to add curtains to, go full length. Choose curtains that are as long as the height of your wall to make the room feel more spacious.

Tip 3: Take Decor to the Walls and Keep Floors Clear

Clutter can make small rooms look even smaller by creating the illusion that the necessary

items take up all of the available floor space. By utilizing walls over floors, your space appears as if there is ample room for all of your items while still leaving room to live and breathe. Just as floor to ceiling curtains and tall mirrors draw the eyes upward and make a room look larger, small items on the floor, be it a decoration or haphazardly placed stack of books, draw the eyes downward and make a space look smaller.

Avoiding this unintended effect does not mean you cannot decorate and apply your personal style. For every area you want to add a decorative or functional accessory, simply first consider if it can be on the wall before looking at floor options. Here are a few ideas to consider:

• Hang indoor plants from the ceiling

• Mount wall mirrors over standing full length mirrors

• Stack floating shelves instead of a traditional bookshelf

Tip 4: Less is More

When decorating, focus on quality over quantity. Larger statement pieces attract guests’ full attention, distracting them from the size of the room. Similarly to the way floor clutter can make a space seem cramped, so too can overly decorated walls. By adding fewer but larger and meaningful items, your home will be decorated but not crowded. For artwork, try to select pieces that have meaning to you and are capable of being conversation pieces.

When it comes to furniture, the best way to increase the visual size of your room is by furnishing it with the right sized items. Oversized as well as undersized furniture can have negative impacts. You’re looking for furniture that is “just right”. Once people are aware of the effect furniture size can have on their space, it’s easy to become carried away and overly cautious, choosing items that are significantly undersized. For main pieces such as dining tables, dressers, media stands and sofas, measure your space first. Record your measurements, including windows, flooring transitions, and each wall‘s length. If shopping in person, refer to these measurements when you’re looking at furniture and bring a tape measure with you to check the size of floor models quickly and compare them to your room’s dimensions.

If you’re shopping online, measure the dimensions of the furniture you’re looking to purchase and mark the space it would occupy on the floor. This allows you to evaluate the footprint of the item before purchase to make sure it does not dwarf the room, nor does the room look too empty and unfinished. Aim for a balance of positive and negative space where movement does not feel restricted by excessive furniture nor do you feel like the room is lacking.

Tip 5: Keep Things Compact

If your space is small, decorative accessories do not have to be stark and cold necessarily, but a compact feel can help make it look larger. Compact does not mean small, but rather clean. Clean cut and streamlined items take up less visual space while still packing the same aesthetic punch. For example, if you’re looking to add greenery, consider a tall vase with stems over a short bowl container with draping greenery and florals.

A compact look can be achieved with multipurpose items and furniture as well. Tables with built in storage, bed frames with floating night stands, and wall mirrors equipped with coat hooks are all ways to get the most out of your space without having to over fill floors or walls. If your decor area is especially small and you’re looking to add a plant as well as artwork, consider a green wall. This will allow you to have a personal artistic touch as well as greenery added to your area while taking up less space than a floor plant and painting would occupy. These multi-purpose furniture and accessories simultaneous help you stay in line with the theme of “less is more”.

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Small or large, decorating your home should be a fun process. Remember to take your time, carefully evaluate each item, and ask yourself if it checks the boxes for the five tips above. Make art and accessories meaningful and refrain from over decorating. Embrace natural and accented lighting and don’t forget to draw attention to the vertical height and windows of your space in order to draw attention away from the square footage. Consider functional pieces that have value and serve multiple purposes. Each addition should truly earn the space they occupy.

For those of you on your small space decorating journey who find yourselves looking for eye-catching but space-minding indoor artificial plants and trees, we’re always happy to help. Our company has decorated hundreds of offices, guest rooms, condos and more over the decades and we would be delighted to provide you with personalized assistance to find the perfect items.

Happy decorating and we hope to hear from you soon!

The Dei-zinz Team