Extending Space
If your apartment has outside views, you should use these. By facing living areas and furniture towards the window or balcony, the outside landscape becomes an extension of the inside space, increasing the perception of the room’s size.Ceilings with light fittings tend to shrink a space. Lights are best located on walls, about 12 inches below ceiling height and directed to shine up across the ceiling and down the walls. This spreads light over the surfaces, rather than concentrating it in a single direction, creating an illusion of size.
Using Color
Interior designers do follow guidelines based on studies of color and light theory to create the appearance of more space, though these may be seen as subjective and relying on intuition.Flexible Space
You could reorganize the apartment to change the functions of the rooms. Think, for instance, are the bedrooms well placed, or should the living areas be relocated?Generally, external views are best adopted for the daylight hours and so for the living and working areas. And bedrooms rely less on broad outside views.
Melbourne’s heritage Romberg’s Stanhill Building was designed in 1950 with flexible apartment spaces that could be used as residences, offices, and medical suites.
Later renovations repurposed the dining and living spaces as smaller bedrooms. The original bedrooms were redesigned as open-plan living and dining spaces, with views to Albert Park Lake.
A studio renovation in the building adopted a storage unit (facing into the bedroom area) to door height, which acts as a screen to divide the nominal “rooms.”
Things that normally work for a single purpose can take on more functions, which aids in using a small space for many purposes. For instance, if you own the apartment, you could replace a normal brick or timber dividing wall with a built-in cupboard which can face, back-to-back, into both rooms.
Using Furniture
While there is limited research on the perceived spatial dimensions of furniture and its effect, studies do show the more furniture you put into a space, the smaller it appears. And most of us know the less “stuff” we have in our apartments the bigger they seem.Fitted living room furniture with built-in side tables that hug the wall is better than having large single units and isolated tables. TVs and sound systems incorporated into storage are more space-efficient than stand-alone units.
Big furniture, like settees and coffee tables, ornate headboards and oversized loose chairs, also overcrowds space. It’s not comfortable to have to walk around large pieces of furniture rather than through space.
The best types of furniture to use in small spaces are simple open-framed chairs and tables, furniture with light frames, steel or timber, and open backs.