How to Use Your Flooring to Make a Room Look Bigger

For many of us, there’s at least one room in our homes that we wish looked larger. While you may have tried painting the walls in light colours, carefully arranging mirrors, or even swapping out heavy curtains for sheers, there’s one often-overlooked element that can have a significant impact on how spacious a room feels: flooring.
With the right choice and layout, your floors can create an illusion of more space, making a compact room feel open and airy. Here’s how to use your flooring to maximise your room's potential.
1. Choose the Right Flooring Colour
Light Flooring
Light-coloured floors are a classic choice for making a room feel bigger. Think soft shades like cream, pale grey, or whitewashed wood. These colours reflect more light, creating an airy and expansive feeling. Lighter floors also draw attention to the overall space of the room rather than the floor itself, helping the room to feel larger and more open. For example, a cream carpet or light wood planks can work wonders in small living rooms or bedrooms, making them seem less confined.
Dark Flooring
Contrary to what you might expect, dark flooring can also make a room feel bigger. While light floors reflect light and open up a space, dark floors anchor a room and add depth, which can make the walls appear to recede, creating the illusion of a larger area. Deep walnut or ebony-toned hardwood can make a space feel both sophisticated and expansive when paired with lighter walls and ceilings. The key is contrast: dark floors combined with lighter colours elsewhere in the room can make the whole space feel more substantial and inviting.
2. Go for One Flooring Style Throughout the House
Using the same flooring throughout multiple rooms is a clever trick to create a seamless flow in your home. By eliminating transitions and door thresholds between rooms, you unify the spaces, making them feel like part of one larger area. This technique is particularly effective in open-plan homes or smaller apartments where the objective is to create a cohesive and continuous feel.
However, it's important to consider the functionality of each room. For example, while wood or laminate might be perfect for living spaces and hallways, bathrooms and kitchens will need moisture-resistant flooring like tiles or luxury vinyl. Even so, you can still choose colours and textures that complement each other, maintaining a visual consistency that helps the entire space feel larger.
3. Consider the Direction of the Flooring
The direction in which you lay your flooring can have a huge impact on the perception of space in a room. For rectangular rooms, it’s usually best to lay floorboards or tiles parallel to the longest wall. This draws the eye along the length of the room, making it seem larger.
This approach works particularly well with narrow hallways or long living rooms, where running the boards or tiles lengthwise enhances the perception of space.
Alternatively, installing flooring on a diagonal can be an unexpected way to visually expand a room. Diagonal lines create a dynamic pattern that disrupts the boxy feel of small spaces. It draws the eye outward to the corners, making the room appear wider than it is. This layout works wonderfully in square or slightly irregularly shaped rooms, adding interest and the illusion of more space.
4. Opt for Wide Planks Over Narrow Strips
Flooring width can play a major role in how big or small a room feels. Wide planks (generally at least 3 inches wide) create fewer seams and visual interruptions than narrow strips. This results in a cleaner, less busy appearance, which makes the room feel larger and more open.
This technique is effective across different types of flooring, whether it’s wood, laminate, or even luxury vinyl planks. Choosing wider planks also allows the natural grain and texture of the wood to be more pronounced, adding depth and character to the space without overwhelming it.
5. Use Large Tiles to Expand the Room
Similar to wide planks, large tiles can make a small room look bigger. Tiles that are at least 12 inches square are ideal for creating a spacious feel. Larger tiles mean fewer grout lines, which reduces visual clutter and helps the floor to appear more unified and less segmented.
This approach works well in bathrooms, kitchens, and entryways, where a seamless look is especially important. Choosing a light grout colour that matches the tile can further enhance the sense of continuity. For an even more expansive look, consider using rectangular tiles and laying them in a brick or herringbone pattern, which can make the floor area feel longer or wider, depending on the layout.
6. Choose the Right Patterns and Finishes
Patterns
Avoid busy or overly complex patterns in small spaces, as they can make the room feel cluttered and cramped. Instead, opt for subtle patterns or solid colours that help unify the room’s design. If you want to incorporate patterns, consider low-contrast options like gentle marbling in tiles or a soft grain pattern in wood.
Vertical stripes or herringbone patterns can help draw the eye upward or across the space, elongating the appearance of the room. These patterns are great for adding a bit of flair while still maintaining a sense of openness.
Finishes
Glossy or polished finishes reflect more light, adding to the room's perceived volume. This is especially effective with tiles or polished hardwood. However, too much shine can sometimes overwhelm a space, so balance it out with matte finishes on walls or furniture to keep the look cohesive and comfortable.
7. Enhance Your Flooring with Smart Furniture Placement
How you place your furniture can either enhance or diminish the effect of your flooring. For example, placing furniture away from the walls can create the illusion of more space around it. Choosing furniture with legs, as opposed to pieces that sit flat on the floor, allows more of the flooring to be visible, adding to the sense of openness.
Rugs can also be strategically used to define areas without breaking up the flow of the room. Opt for rugs that complement the colour and pattern of your flooring rather than contrast sharply with it. This ensures that the room feels integrated and spacious.
8. Reflect and Amplify with Mirrors and Lighting
While flooring does much of the heavy lifting in making a room appear bigger, it’s complemented by good lighting and clever use of mirrors. Placing mirrors opposite windows or light sources can reflect light back into the room, enhancing the effect of light flooring and making the space feel brighter and more open.
Similarly, ensure that your lighting is sufficient to highlight the floor and the room’s overall design. Soft, diffused lighting can reduce shadows and make the space feel more inviting and expansive.
9. Keep It Consistent with Open Plan Living
If you’re working with an open-plan space, keeping the flooring consistent throughout the area is key to maintaining a sense of openness. This approach avoids the choppy, segmented feel that can come from using different flooring types for different areas. Instead, use furniture, rugs, or subtle changes in flooring pattern or direction to define different zones without breaking up the visual flow.
The Power of Flooring in Room Design
The flooring you choose plays a crucial role in how large or small a room feels. By selecting the right colours, materials, patterns, and layouts, you can significantly enhance the perception of space in your home. Whether you opt for light, airy tones or rich, dark hues, the key is to create a sense of unity and flow that draws the eye through the room and beyond.
Remember, flooring is a foundational element of your interior design. It sets the stage for everything else in your home, and when used effectively, it can transform a cramped room into a spacious sanctuary.
At Wall2Wall Carpets and Flooring, we understand the transformative impact that flooring can have on your space. Our extensive range of carpets, hardwood, vinyl, and tile options allows you to find the perfect solution for any room, helping you create a more open, inviting, and stylish home.
Our team of experts is here to guide you through every step—from choosing the ideal flooring to professional installation—ensuring that your rooms not only look bigger but also feel cohesive and comfortable. So, before you start painting walls or rearranging furniture, explore our flooring options at Wall2Wall Carpets and Flooring. You might just find the key to achieving the spacious, welcoming environment you've been dreaming of.