I've always known it was all about simplifying and decluttering, but it is so obvious when you look at buddyrose's before and after pictures and the tiny house too.

There is nothing wrong with buddyrose's before pictures. They're terribly cute, but all the patterns and ruffles take up as much visual space as too much furniture in a room. Take the dining room for example. The dark curtains and table cloths overpower the room. Even the color around the two smaller windows draw attention to them, making the room busy. Where reversing the colors with the light color on the walls and white trim and shutters, puts the attention on only one place - the table.

I've never been a fan of slip covers, even though every decorating magazine seems to love them. They always seem wrinkled and sloppy. Buddyrose's pictures show how clean lines and simple accessories expand a room.

Thanks again for sharing those, buddyrose.

One of the biggest differences one can make in a typical small house is light. Chopped up rooms, small windows, wallpaper or paneling - all of these can contribute to a closed-in feeling.

When I first walked into the home we now live in, my first words were, "This is THE ugliest house I have ever seen!" Really, it was terrible - architecturally undistinguished, a cottage without charm; plus the two nice old ladies who owned it had absolutely some of the worst design taste in the world.

Unlike BR we did considerable structural changes to the inside, creating the modern open plan in the LR/DR/kitchen area, then vaulting the ceiling on the main floor and putting in huge picture windows. The house remains the same footprint, but it feels so much nicer because it gets lots of daylight and the vaulted ceiling creates changes of light and shadow as the sun moves. Height, in this case, substituted for a length/width addition to still create a sense of spaciousness.

These two photos show what I mean. We vaulted the ceiling because the roof had to be redone anyway, so it was only a minor increase in costs and labor to insulate, drywall & spray-paint the vaulted part over the open plan. The remainder was left as attic storage space, although it too was insulated and drywalled.

Both photos are standing in the same place, inside the front door and looking straight out (east-facing) the back of the house. What it used to look like was this:

As we were refinishing the HW floors we found underneath the filthy dark brown shag W2W carpet, I took this shot as a comparison:

Same house, same size, same rooms; but you would never know it was the same house otherwise!

I agree that light makes a huge difference. I would have liked to knock all the walls out of ours. Our living room and kitchen is arranged just wrong and it would have looked like a one-room house.

A while back on the Kitchens forum a bunch of us were vying for the "ugliest original kitchen" award. I won, which tells you how bad the place looked, LOL!

As for painting the ceilings, I find stark white, when the walls are not defines EXACTLY where the walls end and the ceilings begin. Borders near the ceiling make it even more obvious. If you really must go to a lighter ceiling a lighter version of the same paint as on the wall helps the eye not be able to define where one stops and the other starts.

My daughter and I redid a very small house in town, less than 800 sq feet on a single story and the rooms looked twice as large as they did when we started. I used the same tricks on my own home (very large, 1830s federal) because our kitchen has surprisingly low ceilings. I painted the walls a soft camel and continued it on the ceilings. Even though the kitchen is quite large (16 x 32) the low ceilings made me claustrophobic. Now, the room looks as spacious as it really is.

Window treatments should be simple and if possible just going to a valance along with wooden blinds you can pull down at night, or perhaps folding shutters for privacy mean you can let in as much light as possible during the day.

Furniture and its placement is really important. When at all possible use those you can multifunction so that there aren't as many pieces.

We chose to use the spare bedroom as a music and sewing room. No full sized beds, but a day bed one could use as a sofa. The living room had a sofa-sleeper. When company came the tiny house could sleep five people easily.

The kitchen was eat-in and she found a drop-leaf table and kept the both leaves down unless company was coming.

Thankfully the house had a full sized, and dry basement for storage, but the full bed in the master had slide under storage bins for out of season clothing. And everything one could put in a pantry or on an appliance cart ....... was. Counter clutter is a terrible space waster.

And really, over-sized furniture is too. It's a real temptation to move from a large house to a small one and not want to change out furniture. But changing down to items scaled for a small space is really liberating. And if you are a knick-knack hoarder, keep it all in one cabinet. Wall mount everything you can, like a television and go to pendant lights instead of table lamps.

My last house was large and it was not an issue to decorate the walls where the blank spaces needed something. There was plenty of square footage and no sense or need to worry about a closed-in feeling.

I find in my small house, putting decor (pictures, doo-dad's, etc) on the walls makes the eye's reference to space and depth stop right where the decor is. In some places that is a good thing...in some places, I don't want that.

I've learned in my house that picking out only the certain walls in the floorplan where the eye and brain is not searching for more space are the ones which are good to decorate.

I had to teach myself in a small house that just because you have a blank space on a wall does not mean you need to put something on that wall. Sometimes, blank spaces are a good thing. It allows your eye rest and focus on where the allowable endpoints (decor) are, and tricks the brain into feeling more space from the blank walls because you are not boxed in on all sides with visual fencing.

Hope that makes sense.
Gayle

WOW That is so true and it gives me good reason to hold off putting a few things up on my newly painted walls as I had sort of planned on doing.

Sort of the Less is More concept. This last go round in painting in our kitchen brought on a huge purge for me. Since I had to empty the china cupboard drawers too.I unloaded bunches of stuff from them.

Thanks Gayle!!