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10 Tips To Make Any Small Space (Feel) Bigger

Maxwell Ryan
Maxwell RyanCEO
Maxwell left teaching in 2001 to start Apartment Therapy as a design business helping people to make their homes more beautiful, organized AND healthy. The website started up in 2004 with the help of his brother, Oliver. Since then he has grown ApartmentTherapy.com, added TheKitchn.com, our home cooking site, and has authored four books on design. He now lives with his daughter in a lovely apartment in Brooklyn.
updated Jul 16, 2020
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TO BEGIN: The main thing to realize about space, particularly your own home, is that your feeling of it is just that, very much a feeling. Our consciousness of our space comes not from walking through it as much as it comes from how our EYE travels through it, which it does the second you enter the room. Your, eye, however, will only go where it is drawn to light, and it will avoid shadow and clutter as it seeks a place to rest. Therefore, in a very real way, to make a small space feel bigger, you want to EXPAND with light and open space, and avoid the CONTRACTION of darkness, shadow and clutter. (Image credit: Jim Franco)

I get asked about how to make small spaces feel bigger all the time and have done numerous interviews going over these points, BUT I’ve never written them down for myself or for you readers here, so here we go. These are my totally evergreen, classic tips, which come from years of practice. Please add your own!

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Related Small Space Links:
→ The 10 Commandments of Keeping a Small Space Organized
→ 5 Strategies for Decluttering a Small Space
→ 10 Ideas for Dividing a Small Space

Re-edited from a post originally published 10.22.2014 – NT

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