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. Does this Spark an idea?
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.
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.
Lay tile diagonally or at a 45 degree angle to make a small room appear bigger.
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.
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.
Tips
- Choose neutral colors for your flooring if you enjoy changing furniture styles or colors often.
- Keep in mind that contrasting colors of grout -- such as dark grout with light tiles -- emphasize the geometric pattern. If highlighting the pattern is important to you, consider buying larger tiles or laying them diagonally or at an angle.
