Enhance The Peace Of Your Home: 3 Tips To Make Your Cosy Home Appear More Spacious.
It’s no secret that in a city overrun with concrete structures and an ever growing population, the average home buyer in Mumbai finds themselves at a disadvantage, living in a compact space surrounded by ominous towers of stark grey. It is the unfortunate drawback of our City of Dreams. Our space is limited, our Mumbaiites aren’t- but we must live by one of the most basic principles of a functional society, that everybody deserves a roof over their head.
As a result, our homes have become smaller, our buildings have become bigger, and the price of change is our peace of mind. For a lot of people, the standard home now mirrors an almost bleak perception of the fast paced Mumbai lifestyle; one where we work in a cubicle and live in a cubicle. But what if that wasn’t the case?
We’ve seen it world over, young professionals, their seemingly large homes splashed across social media pages, but pull back the curtain and it’s not the square footage that expands their spaces, it’s the keen eye for décor. So let’s run you through some of the best tips to make your home look and feel larger than it may actually be!
- Keep it Simple, Not Boring
The first step to making a space look larger is your colour palette. Consider any number of luxurious flats in Mumbai and you’ll notice something similar in most if not all of them. The inherent colour scheme of the house is neutral, and the pops of colour are introduced via accent pieces.
So why does it work? Neutral colours reflect light a lot more than deeper, bold tones, creating an illusion of space. The consistency of the colours across walls and pieces of décor also let your eyes to glide across the room instead of jumping to a focal point. It allows for the space to breathe, and as a result, neutral colours are considered to have a calming effect on the viewer; and isn’t that the end goal, for us to feel calm and peaceful in our own home?
Neutrals are also easier on the purse strings. If you have a 3 BHK flat in Malad, you’ve spent a fair penny on the property and the interiors. Now what if the interiors chosen today are ‘off trend’ tomorrow? Going through the ordeal of redoing your entire 3 BHK seems like a mammoth task. Choose a neutral palette and layer colours on top of it! It’s easier to change accents, than it is to change interiors.
Bonus Tip: Try to avoid a stark white paint for your walls. Look for a warmer tone of white/off white. It’s a lot easier for our eyes to absorb a tone of off white than pure white. Also consider yellow lights instead of white lights to bring warmth into the space.
- Combine Light & Statement
Looking again at a number of housing projects in Mumbai, and you’ll notice a playful synergy in the décor of the common areas. Glass tables with wooden accents, for example. When we say light, we mean furniture that has a more weightless appearance, such as a chair with slim legs, or an entrance console that is raised off the ground. The aim is to avoid drawing the eyes downwards, but keeping the attention at eye level or higher. Combine the lighter, airy furnishings with a statement piece like a heavier coffee table that offers weight to the seating area and the illusion of something so imposing placed comfortably amongst other furniture will give your space a much larger appearance.
- Utilise Vertical Space
One of the biggest mistakes we make when looking at doing up our homes is look at the floor space, but disregard the wall space. Keeping with the idea of moving your eye away from the ground, playing with a pendant light that hangs over the dining table, shelving that extends upwards with interesting pieces of décor, wall art that highlights the height of free wall space- all these things move your eye upwards off the ground. Even the inclusion of a large indoor plant fanning out above your couch is using the vertical axis and drawing your eye away from the footprint of the house to the space of the home.
Most residential projects in Mumbai are designed to maximise the usable area of the home. Gone are the days of mazes and corridors, nooks and crannies that serve no purpose. Most builders provide the home buyers with a sizeable blank canvas to express themselves without inhibition- allowing each home owner to create for themselves the house that allows them to stretch their legs, take a deep breath and revel in the peace of their spacious home.