Disclosure: This is a collaborative post.
It’s a problem that might seem, at first, to be impossible to fix. A room that simply doesn’t get a lot of light might not look like it’s going to change unless you somehow change the position of the sun. It can feel small, cramped, dark, and dingy. But it doesn’t have to stay that way. Here, we’re going to look at both little and large ways you can introduce some light into that room.
Bouncing light around the room
First of all, the lighting of the room isn’t just a product of how much natural light gets through the windows. It starts there, but it also has to take into account how effectively the room can let the light travel around it. Changing up the surfaces of the room can help you address that in a variety of ways. For instance, choosing a brighter, sunnier colour palette can help. Darker colours absorb more light, and brighter ones reflect more of it. Well-positioned mirrors are even more effective, so putting them directly access from windows can make the room feel a lot brighter when light does come in.
Open it up
Of course, to take advantage of light more effectively, you want to let more of it in the home in the first place. We’re addressing natural light, primarily, since anyone can choose to add more light fixtures. When it comes to natural light, you need to consider your options more carefully. Choosing lighter window treatments, such as blinds or shutters instead of curtains can make it easier to bring more light in. However, if you really want to change how the room feels from top to bottom, then switching out a wall for stacker doors will make the most amount of difference to the feeling of the room. If you have the privacy to not worry about anyone looking into them at any time of day, they will transform the lighting easily.
Open up some space
Aside from helping the light more effectively bounce around the room, you want to make sure that you’re not blocking it or creating any dark, shadowy corners that can dominate the feeling of the room. One of the best ways to do that is to save space in whatever way you can, getting rid of clutter, pushing furniture to the walls instead of situating it in the centre of the room, and so on. If you really want to maximise the amount of room that light has to play in, you may even consider knocking down a wall to open the room up even more.
There are plenty of different solutions allowing you to brighten up your room, you just have to know what you’re willing to pay towards it. You can “trick” the room into getting more light to bounce around, you can open it up more light, and you can make sure that nothing is standing in the way of that light. Hopefully, the tips above help you understand how to do each.
