Use Flooring to Make a Small Room Look Larger
We cherish the timeless design and architectural features of older-style homes such as mid-century modern, but sometimes an older floorplan features rooms that are much smaller by today’s standards. If your home has spaces that feel cramped or not as open as you would prefer, consider how you can use savvy flooring materials to provide the opposite effect.
By using natural light and angles to your advantage, you can help change the perception of a more confined surface area. Here are a few key small room ideas that homeowners can use to make rooms look larger with flooring.
Large Sizes
As obvious as it may seem, using larger-sized planks and tiles will certainly help your smaller rooms feel bigger! By reducing the number of seams and grout lines in the finished floor, the visual is uncluttered, and the larger the surface area of the room will appear. Wider, longer hardwood, laminate, and luxury vinyl planks are currently a top-seller, and larger-sized tile and natural stone are nothing short of luxurious and grand.
Balance Colors
Brighter, airy flooring shades such as white, cream, light grey, blonde, beige, and greige are excellent for reflecting natural light to create an open feel. Depending on your design scheme, you can also consider using a low-contrast wall color to help visually reduce the horizon line and make a small room appear more expansive. Darker colored flooring should be contrasted with lighter walls to prevent smaller spaces from feeling overwhelmed.
Material Choices
Open floorplans are extremely popular, and you can explore using a continuous flooring material throughout the home to make smaller rooms feel connected to the larger areas. No matter what material you choose, avoid a shinier finish for the small rooms and lean towards simple, natural, warm, or matte finishes to keep the space airy. In this case, subtle texture will also work to your favor more than highly textured materials to maintain an uncluttered visual.
Flooring Installation
Even the way that your flooring is installed can contribute to a roomier perception for smaller spaces. When you create a plank installation such as chevron, herringbone, or parquet, you can actually guide the perspective of someone entering a small room towards a large window, wall, or standout architectural feature where natural light brightens the room.
If the smaller room is narrow in shape, consider installing planks at a right angle from the longest side of the room to enhance the visual depth. If you run the planks away from the door from the perspective of entering the room, you can make it appear that the room goes back further than it really does!
For even more valuable small room ideas, call our flooring experts and visit one of our showrooms to investigate which dynamic flooring solutions will help you maximize the space in your home!
