Do you feel your walls closing in on you?  Here are three tips to make your space look and feel bigger.

1.  Contrast shrinks space. Forget doing a white ceiling. Consider painting all walls and the ceiling the same color. This works whether you use light or bold colors. Why does it work? By creating one less transition for your eye to process, your eye travels around the entire room without stopping to say, “oops, there’s the ceiling, just where I expected it!”

2. Add decorative accents to a ceiling. By adding a textured wallpaper, geometric stencil, or beautiful ceiling medallion to a light fixture, you give the illusion that there must be more height than there is. Sure, you draw attention to it, but your eye sees the decoration as accent, not necessarily the end of the story and the end of the space. Check out stenciled medallions from http://www.cuttingedgestencils.com.

3. Move your furniture in from the walls. By giving more space around the furniture, and not just in front of it, you create a sea of space, which your eye will appreciate. You may also create more storage spaces to decorate, which your eye will process as orderly and color-coordinated. Cluttered and uncoordinated color stories look smaller every time.