Before & After: 3 Easy & Inexpensive Ideas for Making Rooms Look Larger

Every once in a while, we need a change. My husband and I loved our bedroom before: clean, cozy and colorful, it made us happy every time we were in it. That is, until I decided I was being smothered by it. When an apartment feels cluttered, regardless of space, sometimes it’s more about your own emotional issues with the space itself. Here are a few simple tips and tricks that can help to open up a space and give it the breath of fresh air that it (or you) so desperately needs.

1. Maximize your space by using light colors, specifically on the wall. White is right! I honestly believe that you cannot go wrong with bright, heavenly white. We painted our bedroom walls Polar Bear white, and left the ceiling in the previous dark gray.

2. Do a furniture and accessory shakeup! We bought ourselves a nice dresser from West Elm, switched out the dated ceramic lamps for new glass bedside lamps, changed up some artwork, removed two bookshelves and a chair that you can’t quite see in the photo, and replaced our bedspread with another quilt made by my mother, in bright white and navy. (Note: No, my mom can’t make you one, but you CAN purchase the quilt that was her inspiration for my gift, here at S.D. Evans Quilts).

3. Trick the eye with window treatments. As you can see in the before image, that window does not cover the entire back side of the room. But by adding curtains in a color similar to the wall paint, we maximized the space by tricking the eye into imagining a much larger window.

What are your tips for maximizing a space?

Re-edited from a post originally published 2.25.14-NT