5 Ways to Use Built-In Shelves to Make a Room Feel Larger
Posted on: 12 September 2017
Built-in bookshelves look beautiful, and they can also affect how the room looks overall. If you're working with a residential carpenter to put built-in bookshelves in your home, there are a range of ideas that you may want to consider. If you want the shelves to make the room look bigger, here are some ideas to consider.
1. Opt for Light Colours
Light colours always help to make spaces larger. Light bounces off of light colours, and that helps create the appearance of extra space. You can go with a light-coloured wood such as birch or pine, or you can go for wood that is painted white or another colour.
2. Go With a Floor-to-Ceiling Design
When looking through different design ideas with your residential carpenter, consider looking exclusively at designs that run from the floor to the ceiling. This takes the gaze of anyone in the room and sweeps it up and down. That creates a visual illusion of extra space.
In contrast, if the built-in shelves are only part way up the wall or otherwise truncated, you lose that visual effect.
3. Orient the Shelves on the Shorter Walls
If your room is a rectangle, consider putting the shelves on the shortest wall. That makes the shelves taller rather than wider, and that too helps with making the space feel taller. If you put the shelves on the longer walls, that can create the appearance of a wide but squat room.
However, these is one exception. If you have sloped ceilings, you may want to choose the walls next to the highest part of the ceiling. Even if that's a long wall, this still pulls the gaze upward and amplifies the feeling of height.
4. Go for Recessed Walls
A residential carpenter doesn't have to put in shelves that are attached to the walls. Rather, as long as there is a cavity between your walls, these professionals can actually cut into the existing wall and recess the shelves. This creates a larger space because it means your shelves aren't taking away any of your existing floor space.
5. Integrate Other Built-Ins
You don't just have to do shelves. You can also talk with the carpenter about putting in built-in cabinets, desks or even bunks for sleeping. That doesn't create an illusion of more space, but it makes the room more useable, which ultimately makes it feel larger than it is.
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