How to Make Your Small Kitchen Seem Bigger – 10 Expert Tips
Does your kitchen feel small, gloomy, and cramped? If so, don’t despair! There are many things you can do to help make your kitchen feel bigger, brighter, and much more welcoming.
Kitchen design expert Penelope Jacobs at MyJobQuote.co.uk has created this list of the 10 best tips to make your small kitchen seem larger. Take a look at the list below. The more of these tips that you can incorporate into your kitchen, the larger your kitchen is going to seem!
Choose Light Colours
There are three main design components that can determine how spacious a room seems. These are colours, lighting, and the contents of the room. One of the easiest things you can do to make your kitchen seem larger is to consider decorating the room in a light, bright colour.
If your small kitchen walls are dark, this can make the room seem gloomy and crowded. Lighter shades offer a bright and airy feeling. The best shades to help your small kitchen seem larger include bright shite, off-white, light yellows, creams, and pale shades of grey.
Add Reflective Materials
Shiny surfaces in the kitchen can help to reflect light and bounce it around the room. This makes the room much brighter and also gives the illusion of a much larger room. So with this in mind, consider adding some reflective materials throughout your kitchen.
Mirrored appliances are a great option as these prevent you from having to add anything extra to your kitchen, preventing clutter. Glass cabinet doors are also a brilliant way to bounce light around the room. Alternatively, you could opt for a glass-tiled splashback or a metallic splashback such as copper or silver. In addition, you could choose a reflective countertop. When paired with under-cabinet lighting, this can accentuate the amount of light in the room and make the space seem larger.
Expand The Space With Cabinets
If you're considering adding new cabinets to your kitchen, choose taller cabinets that can raise your gaze and make the ceiling feel higher. Taller cabinets also mean that you'll have more storage to help tame the clutter. This is a huge benefit for smaller kitchens.
If you're choosing tall cabinets, make sure they're finished in a light colour. Avoid any intricate designs, as these could appear too busy in your small kitchen. Flat doors work well in a small kitchen as these can help to complement the clean lines in the room. When choosing hardware for your cabinets, keep things simple.
Avoid Strong Visual Contrasts
Once you’ve chosen a colour for your kitchen, be sure to stick to it. Some homeowners may be tempted to liven things up with something like an accent wall. While this can work well in a larger kitchen, in a smaller kitchen, the strong visual contrast can make the room seem segmented and restricted.
In a small kitchen, you want to keep your kitchen walls light and bright. If you want to introduce some additional colour to the room, these should be added in smaller, temporary ways. For example, add some colourful tea towels, window treatments, or accessories. A coloured matching toaster, kettle, and microwave set can do a great job at adding some pops of colour to your small kitchen.
Keep The Room Clutter-Free
Items such as cookbooks, spices, and small appliances can take up a lot of valuable space on the countertops. This will make the room seem smaller and will highlight the lack of space. If you are thinking about adding some new cabinets to your kitchen, be sure to choose cabinets with lots of storage solutions so that you can find a space for everything, ultimately eliminating the countertop clutter.
Taller upper kitchen cabinets can provide more space for storing all of the clutter. In addition, you may wish to consider some customisable options such as pull-out or swing-out shelves or concealed storage racks. These additional options can provide maximum storage for your small kitchen, allowing you to hide things away neatly behind closed doors. The less cluttered the kitchen is, the larger it will seem.
Add Accent Lighting
The eyes are naturally drawn to the highest contrasting point in the room. When it comes to the kitchen, this area is usually the top of the cabinets. If shadows create a strong visual line between the ceiling and the top of the cabinets, this can make the kitchen seem smaller. The best way to soften these shadows is to add some uplighting on top of the cabinets. This will cast a gentle illumination upwards and will ease the visual contrast created by the shadows. This will make the room seem much more open.
In a similar way, you can install lighting beneath the upper cabinets. This will direct light onto the countertop in a similar way. The light will eliminate any shadows underneath the cabinets, helping to reduce the contrast. This will help your kitchen look much larger.
Choose Glass Cabinet Doors
Replacing your old cabinet doors with glass-fronted doors can be very appealing and can also trick the eye into thinking the kitchen is much larger than it actually is. The eye will be drawn into the cupboard rather than stopping at the door. This creates the illusion of more space. If you do consider adding glass-fronted cabinets to your kitchen, choose light wood or white-coloured cabinets to maximise the spacious effect.
If you’re worried about showing the inside of your cupboards or if you think it will look messy, all hope is not lost. You could consider opting for opaque glass cabinets. These will offer the benefit of making the kitchen look brighter and larger while also concealing what’s inside the cupboards. Opaque glass can reflect light around the room, brightening the kitchen and making it seem larger.
Open Up The Floor Space
It's important to free up as much floor space as you can in a small kitchen. If you have a table in the kitchen, choose one that can be folded down between your meals. If that isn't an option, simply make sure you choose a small dining table. Any other freestanding surfaces in the room, such as a cabinet or a kitchen island, also need to be small. If you can do without these items – even better!
By choosing smaller items or fewer items, you can increase your floor space for foot traffic. This makes it easier to prepare meals and manoeuvre around your kitchen. If you can choose built-in appliances such as a built-in oven, refrigerator, dishwasher, and washing machine, this could also help you save on floor space.
Invite Natural Light Into The Room
One of the best things you can do to make a room seem bigger is to invite as much natural light as possible into the room. Get rid of any curtains or blinds that may be blocking the light. Leaving the window uncovered will allow much more light into the room. If you would like a window covering, consider a simple roller blind that can be rolled all the way up during the day. Alternatively, consider choosing sheer curtains.
Also, avoid placing anything large on the windowsill or in front of the window, as this could block the light from entering the room. Also, maximise the amount of light that bounces around the room by choosing glossy construction materials and adding reflective items like small reflective accents and mirrors around the room. One large mirror on the kitchen wall can make a big difference in making the room seem much brighter and larger.
Choose Open Shelving
Open storage options can provide a more spacious and airy appearance in your small kitchen. Consider removing a couple of your cabinet doors. Take a step back, and you will instantly see the illusion of additional space. However, this trick will only work if your cupboards aren't overwhelmed with stuff. If you have cluttered open shelves, this will only make the room seem more overwhelming and smaller.
With this in mind, it's a good idea to have a clearout to ensure you're only keeping hold of what you're using. Get rid of any out-of-date food and drink items and throw away anything that you haven’t used or don’t intend to use any time soon. If you need additional storage, you could consider installing some floating shelves on a kitchen wall. This will give you a place to store additional items without taking up any floor space and without adding anything too bulky.
