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How to Make a Small Room Look Bigger by Using Flooring

Floors visually form a fifth wall for a room, therefore the flooring choice you make affects the room's look dramatically. The first impression in a small room shouldn't be about the meager size, it should focus on the attractive decor and overall appearance. Choosing the right type of floor covering helps optically enlarge a room's appearance. The color, pattern, layout and the available lighting all come into play when deciding on the perfect flooring for the room.

Things You'll Need

  • Graph paper and pencil
  • Tile grout that closely matches tile color
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Instructions

    • 1

      Look at the lighting in the small room. Adequate lighting enables even a room with dark floor coverings to look spacious if you use the right pattern and layout. If you have little lighting via windows or fixtures, a light color works best in small rooms.

    • 2

      Inspect any tile or hardwood you are considering for a small room. Lines that intersect and are busy diminish the size of a room. If the tile or hardwood pattern may be repeated twice without intersecting lines, it visually increases the size of the room.

    • 3

      Lay tile diagonally or at a 45 degree angle to make a small room appear bigger.

    • 4

      Draw a layout of the room on graph paper and then sketch in the pattern of the flooring. This enables you to experiment without laying out the flooring in a way that decreases the visual size of the room.

    • 5

      Pick tile grout for your ceramic flooring that closely resembles the color in your tile. The intersecting grout lines -- particularly in small size tiles -- visually decreases the size of the room.