How can you make things appear bigger than they are?

light coloured roomYeah ok, it's not 'that' I'm looking to make bigger but property.  Jitka is into photography and she's mentioned a few times some of the tricks that estate agents use to distort the size of properties and rooms.  As someone that's about to embark on the property ladder, not to mention moving into new rented accomodation, this is all interesting stuff, not 

Anyway, the point of this blog.  Some new research has investigated how light makes rooms look larger (or smaller).  Apparently the standard belief in design circles is that if you want your rooms to appear big and spacious you make the ceiling lighter than the walls.  This contrast will make the room appear larger.  Not sure how this works with colour blind people like myself, but it is the accepted wisdom.

This research explores whether this really happens.  They conducted two experiments where people wore 3D glasses to try and judge the height of the ceiling in dozens of virtual rooms.  The rooms in this experiment were all empty, with the walls all painted grey, albeit with various shades for wall, floor and ceiling.  More importantly, all the rooms were exactly the same depth and width, but the height varied between 2.9m and 3.1m.

 

Interestingly, the lightness of the ceiling did indeed increase the perceived height.  However, contrary to the accepted wisdom, the rooms also appeared bigger when the walls were painted a lighter shade as well.  This was multiplied if both wall and ceiling was painted in a light shade or colour, so the idea of contrast between wall and ceiling being all important was proven to be bunkem.  The colour of the floor was shown to have no impact at all, hence suggesting that overall lightness was not a big factor.
 
Oberfeld and his colleagues said that practical guidelines for increasing perceived room height should be modified in light of their findings. "A rule of thumb consistent with our data," they wrote, "would be: 'If you intend to make the room appear higher, paint both the ceiling and the walls in a light colour. You are free to choose the colour of the floor because it has no effect on the perceived height."
 
So if you want to make your rooms appear as big as possible the secret would appear to be to paint both walls and ceiling in a light colour.

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2 thoughts on “How can you make things appear bigger than they are?

  1. Whilst it doesn't surprise me that estate agents will try every trick in the book to make things appear bigger and more spacious than they are, I can't remember a single time when I've looked at a property photo online or in print where the walls weren't a light shade. I mean if you take things in relativity, and assume all estate agents use the same trick then they're not really making their place stand out, merely keeping up with the Jones.

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