The first person who walked into my ten- by-twelve bedroom and uttered those words – “wow, this feels so much bigger than I expected” – I knew I had it figured out. Because the truth is: it was not a big bedroom. In fact, prior to renovation, I physically had to sideways shuffle between my bed and my dresser.
But – and here’s the kicker – I’d somehow managed to create the optical illusion of…MORE ROOM. * It all began with colour. I’d been living with dreary beige walls for months (I’m talking that tragically disappointing builder’s beige that nobody wants to but somehow everybody seems to end up with) and I knew it needed to change. Everyone was telling me to go dark – deep blue, maybe even black.
Bold colours, friends told me. Bold colours are cool, they told me.
As they scrolled past those impossibly curated Instagram bedrooms with their #darkwoodfloors and velvet drapes. * But those rooms weren’t mine.
My gut told me those colours wouldn’t work here. Instead I picked the lightest, barely-there blue I could find at the paint store. That shade of blue that tricks you into thinking it’s white until you hold it up next to an actual white paint swatch.
The shop attendant eyed me suspiciously. Were you sure you wanted cream? she asked. Subtle was the name of the game, though.
Light washes are like invisibility paint for your walls and when you’ve got less square footage to work with, you want your walls looking tiny too. White can look sterile and…well…boxed-in if that’s all you’ve got. * Speaking of boxes, once I understood the importance of scale things really started to click. Wrong-headed chronically-small-spacer that I was, my first inclination was to go…well, small.
Downsized bedside table! Snug skinny sofa! Miniature everything!
Naturally I learned this lesson the hard way by buying exactly that dratted wee bedside table. It sat next to my double bed like a child beside a dining room table – just plain silly. * My dining room table broke so I bought a bigger bed instead. * The lesson here: forget scale when it comes to furniture, your eyes want to see BIG. One large piece of furniture anchors a room and holds so much more visual weight than several small ones.
Forget symmetry – anyone can line up matching bedside tables like they’re supposed to. Don’t be afraid of an oversized dresser in a small room. Just make sure it’s ONE dresser.
One solid chunk. No legs! No giant awkward headboard.
Fitted wardrobes, bed bases, bench seats. That streamlined look will give your small room breathing room and create the illusion of more square footage. * Which brings me to my bed. I didn’t have the space (or budget, frankly) to replace my actual mattress with something smaller so I decided to work around it.
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Instead of a bulky bed frame I built my bed a simple wooden platform base that sits flush with the floor. Literally just a low rectangle of wood that my mattress rests on top of. It tricked the eye into thinking there was no bed at all against that whisper-wall and created instant leg space. * The mirror.
Ahhh, the mirror. Mirrors are tried-and-tested bedroom tricks for a reason. Hang one opposite a window and you double the amount of natural light in your room instantly.
But be careful where you put that sucker – point it at the messy door you always throw your coat/jumping-on-your-bed kiddo/cat into and it just highlights how cluttered your space really is. Find the nicest looking wall in your room and commandeer it for mirror real estate. That was my window – nothing too ornate, just matte black floating frame – hung kitty-corner to my bedroom window. * As in, directly opposite it.
The window + mirror combo gave me twice as much light AND created a sense of continuity between two separate walls. * The thing about having one large dresser is that you kinda sorta have to store all your clothes and makeup and stuff in that one large dresser. Built-in wardrobes were never in the cards for me and buying a freestanding wardrobe would have eaten up all my remaining floor space. Instead I installed a clothing rail in the corner of the room (those sleek black ones that look like they came straight from a storage palace) and kept just one season of clothes hanging at a time.
Under-bed storage bins became my best friends. STORAGE UNIT bins. The seamless continuity of my clothing rail actually made it a FASCETHING of my room since I arranged my clothes by colour gradient.
Start with whites at one end and let your colours slowly fade into darker greys or blues at the other. * Lighting is everything. One big dark overhead light completely changes the mood (and proportions!) of a room. As much as I wanted to rewire the whole thing to be smaller-scale fixtures, I knew in my heart that wasn’t happening.
Instead I played around with different light sources. Floor lamp in one corner. String lights mounted around my window frame. (Yes.
I am that person.) Table lamp on my dresser.
Multiple light sources allow you to light different areas of your room from different angels which eliminates scary dark shadows. Halos.
Of light. Make sense? * Floor to ceiling curtains. All the way, people.
When you hang them so they pool onto the floor, they make your windows (and therefore your room) look WAAAY bigger than they are. And by hanging the rail as close to the ceiling as possible AND extending the curtains beyond the window itself on either side, you’re tricks the eye into thinking you have a giant wall of window when really…you don’t. * But hey. It LOOKS like you do.
Oh, and just FYI – the curtains are just lightweight linen in the same colour family as the walls. Bonus! They kinda disappear into the background but still add that nice soft texture to an otherwise hard room.
