5 Flooring Strategies to Make Your Space Feel Bigger
When designing a space, selecting the right flooring is an important decision that can significantly influence your final design. This step should not be underestimated. Flooring enhances the visual appeal of a design and can also affect how spacious a room feels. So, for your next renovation or room refresh, consider these five flooring strategies to visually expand a smaller space and create a sense of openness.
Flooring Strategies
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Choose Light and Bright
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Go Big with Large Formats
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Maintain Visual Continuity
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Embrace the Shine
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Introduce Diagonal Lines
1. Choose Light and Bright
Opt for light-coloured flooring such as pale hardwood or light-toned luxury vinyl tiles. These brighter options can effectively reflect natural light, instantly creating a sense of greater space and openness in a room. This illusion works because light colours tend to visually expand and create the impression of a more open environment, while dark colours soak up light, giving the feeling of a smaller, more confined space.
2. Go Big with Large Formats
Consider choosing larger-format planks or tiles when floor shopping. These can make a room look bigger visually. With fewer grout lines, these oversized options create the illusion of a more continuous and uninterrupted surface, making the room appear larger to the human eye. This works especially well in open-concept spaces, creating a seamless and sophisticated floor design.
3. Maintain Visual Continuity
Use the same flooring material throughout connecting areas, like open-concept kitchen-living rooms, to maintain visual continuity and create a sense of flow. This trick works because the human eye and brain perceive a continuous, uninterrupted surface as a single, unified space, rather than recognising the individual rooms or divisions. This creates a perception of a larger, more open area, even if the square footage remains the same.
4. Embrace the Shine
Create a sense of spaciousness with polished or reflective flooring surfaces. These finishes can help amplify the available light in a room, creating the illusion of depth and increased spatial awareness. This tricks the human eye and brain into perceiving the space as larger than it is, making even the smallest of rooms feel like expansive environments.
5. Introduce Diagonal Lines
Consider installing hardwood or luxury vinyl tiles in diagonal, herringbone, or chevron patterns to elongate a room visually. Diagonal lines draw the eye along the longest diagonal axis of the room, creating a sense of depth and grandeur. This technique works particularly well in narrow spaces or rooms with lower ceilings, as the eye is naturally drawn to follow the direction of the diagonal lines, helping to offset the closed-in feeling.
The grandness of a room can be achieved through the intentional selection of flooring. By incorporating these five thoughtful strategies, you can easily transform any underwhelming, cramped space into one that feels airy and grand. Happy designing!