How Tiles Can Make Your Room Feel Bigger
You know those American movies where the houses are huge, have immaculately decorated rooms and boast huge abundances of space? Life isn’t really like that, nor is it here in Australia.
We’ve never really had huge houses and typically stay close to our neighbours in our cities and suburbs which have led to an increase of townhouses, units and apartments.
Although we love our homes dearly, sometimes couples find themselves in situations wondering how they can make their room feel bigger without removing furniture or knocking down walls.
There are classic ways to help make a room feel larger than the floor plan suggests.
The most popular method is to hang mirrors on the walls to bounce more light and create the illusion of space with their reflections. Otherwise there are some clever painting techniques that can make the room appear longer or expand the space - but you need to be careful because the same techniques can also be used to decrease the space or lower the roof!
But there is a less commonly known way to make a room feel bigger… Tiles!
Yes, the benefits of using tiles and their diversity of materials and finishes are well publicised, but tiles can make your room feel bigger too.
Our in-house team of flooring and tile experts have put together the top ways to use tiles to make your space feel larger than it is:
Use Your Floor Tiles On The Walls Too
When laying the floor tiles don’t stop there, keep going up the walls!
Whether you’re laying tiles with a decorative pattern, elegant texture or a solid colour, by tiling up the wall you will create a situation for the eye to naturally flow through the room observing one seamless and attractive space with no boundaries.
This tip to increase the size of your room is particularly useful in bathrooms, toilets and laundries due to their particularly smaller sizes - plus you get the extra benefit of water resistant tiles in your wet rooms (double the functionality!)
Use The Same Floor Tile In Every Room
On a similar train of thought to the above tip, to create the illusion of larger room sizes you will want to create a flowing effect for the mind with no barriers.
Using the same floor tile throughout your living areas will create a unified look and a continuous flow for your home instead of breaking up the experience.
Bonus Tip: You can really make the most of this room space-increasing strategy by closely matching the tile grout colour to your tile colour to create an even more seamless look to your flooring. (check out our comprehensive guide to tile grout to learn more about grouting)
Pick Your Tile Colours Carefully
Much like the strategy of using painting techniques to make a room feel larger, the decision of tile colours and where to use them can make or break your mission to increase the size of your space.
The fascinating image below displays a grid of nine colour combinations of the same room with different results. Depending on your desired results, your will need to carefully consider the shades and tones or your roof, walls and flooring colours to create a cohesive effort to maximise your room size.
When picking tiles you’ve got a lot more diversity at your fingertips than just picking the colour. So we’ve written a guide for all the technical decisions to consider when picking tiles to keep in mind.
Lay Your Floor Tiles Diagonally
Instead of opting for a more commonly used grid or staggered layout, choosing to lay tiles on your floor in a diagonal pattern will make your room feel larger.
The sweeping-away pattern of the tiles will give a sense of movement and prevents your brain from recognising a contained grid-like pattern in your space to help the sense of a larger floor space.
Use Light Coloured Floor Tiles
Several of these tips to make your room feel bigger revolves around the flooring of your home but we’ve avoided recommending colour choices that will impact your interior design - that is your personal preference and your rooms unique situation.
Having said that, there are clear results that having a lighter coloured floor will make your room look bigger than it actually is. The natural and light colours will reflect the light rather than suck it up and make your room feel airier.
Timber Floor Tiles
Want the space-enhancing benefits of tiles but have an unexplainable inner desire for wooden flooring? We totally understand you - and got you covered!
You can get the best of both worlds thanks to the wide range of wood look timber tiles at Volare Tiles & Flooring. With an array of colour ranging from warm and rich oaks to light nordic timbers, you can get the floors (and walls) you are dreaming of.
You can see all the information on timber look tiles and see the gallery of stunning rooms utilising wood look tiles instead of timber planks while achieving the natural timber aesthetics.
Use Large Format Tiles on the Floor
When visualising tiles people often think of square bathroom tiles or 300mm rectangle tiles. Well good news, there are also large format tiles which come in sizes around 1200mm!
These large format tiles naturally make small spaces feel bigger because of their sheer size as there will be fewer grout lines and larger tile faces giving the area a seamless, less busy and more expansive - exactly what you’re after.
Need Help Making Your Room Look Bigger?
Our friendly tile and flooring experts are a click, phone call or tile showroom visit away who will provide specific advice to your situation and direct you to all the tiles you may be interested in using to make your room look bigger.
