One challenge that many luxury homeowners are facing when it’s time to put their property on the market is that there’s simply too much house. As tastes and preferences have changed over the past decade, there has been a noticeable shift to smaller living spaces among affluent buyers. While you probably won’t be demolishing a section of your home anytime soon, you can certainly overcome this situation by rethinking how you decorate your living space. Here are a few tips to help make a large home feel more intimate.
Textures and Colors
When you want to make a room feel bigger, it’s no secret that painting the walls a light color will help. Conversely, dark walls (and even ceilings) can make a space appear smaller. Rich earth tones, like brown, dark green and red are especially well suited to this purpose as they create a cozy ambience. A room of grand scale can sometimes be perceived as cold, but this is often overcome by using warm natural textures, like wood and stone, which is one reason why these materials are so prevalent in alpine chalets.
Thoughtful Furnishings
If there’s too much open space in a large home, it’s all too easy to feel bare. Equally important, however, is to not overwhelm the eye with too much furniture. A spacious living room, for example, may benefit from multiple seating areas and gathering points that serve various purposes, such as a quiet reading nook with one or two seats and a separate space with couches where groups can hang out. Remember to pay attention to the flow of the room when decorating.
Embrace the Scale
Another strategy is to simply embrace the grand proportions of the home. That could mean using expansive wall space and soaring ceilings as a way to decorate with sizable works of art or tall indoor trees that wouldn’t fit in a smaller space. Decor should match the scale of the room that it’s in, which is why a voluminous great room with floor-to-ceiling windows will feel much cozier if it’s filled with an oversized coffee table and sectional couch that’s suited to the space.
