The Sunday News
Home Decor with Amanda Ncube
HAVING a big space is an ideal thing for most people. It’s easy to yearn for a larger space when you are living in a tiny one, but big rooms present their own challenges too, it becomes difficult to fully furnish a big room.
This week we will explore ways or strategies of making your big room feel comfortable and balanced.
Whether you live in a loft living room with extremely high ceilings or simply have a lot of space to fill, there are ways that can help you make your room feel balanced and comfortable.
Strategically place tall potted plants. Fill vertical height in rooms with tall ceilings or fill bare, lonely corners with potted trees.
As long as your space gets enough light to support the plant’s needs, you really can’t go wrong with adding a massive houseplant.
Paint two-tone walls for instance using a light and dark colour at the same time. While tall potted plants are great for drawing the eye up and accentuating high ceilings, sometimes we crave the opposite effect. Painting colour on your walls only part of the way up creates a cosy feeling, tricking the eye into thinking the ceilings are lower than they are.
Another way of manipulating space is using a large couch instead of a coffee table. Large seating arrangements can feel a bit empty if there is too much distance between the sofa and coffee table. Choosing a big upholstered sofa instead of a traditional coffee table will close that gap and add softness at the same time.
Small chairs can sometimes do the trick of filling empty spaces, these versatile little seats can also fill in as footstools of side tables.
Add cosiness with a screen. In a large, open space, you may want to create an area that feels more protected and intimate — decorative screens are your friend for this. Partially folded and placed behind your sofa, a screen will create the impression of a smaller room without stopping the flow of the room.
Fill dead wall space rather than letting it go bare. In a large space, it is nearly always best to pull furniture off the walls, creating cozy arrangements closer to the centre of the space. The trouble is, this can leave a great deal of wall space bare. To avoid this you can use portraits to cover the walls at the same time making the place feel more comfortable.
