Oppressive, cold, gloomy, gloomy, sad atmosphere, there is no shortage of adjectives to describe what we feel when we find ourselves in a dark and poorly lit room.
Unless you are a vampire, a bright room is always more pleasant to live in. However, through bad luck, following bad choices or because of carelessness, we can easily find ourselves living in a place that is closer to the cave than to the garden of Eden.
But no matter how you ended up in this dark story, here are solutions to invite light into your home:
1. Maximize the entry of light through windows
Are your shutters properly open? Aren’t your curtains too thick and limit the exposure of your interior to light? Is there no furniture blocking the window? It may seem silly, but the first thing to do to make a room brighter is to make sure that your windows fully fulfill their role as a source of light.
2. Give it a good lick of paint
You can’t imagine how much a lick of paint can change your house or apartment. To bring brightness into a room, opt for neutral colors (white, beige, gray, etc.) which you will apply to both the walls and the ceiling. You should know that a dark ceiling, in addition to darkening a room, gives the impression that it is smaller. After a good coat of white paint on the ceiling, you will have the impression of having pushed the walls. Do not hesitate to repaint the beams white either, if you have them on the ceiling, you will obtain even more clarity.
3. Lighten the soil
The color of the floor has as big an impact as that of the walls and ceiling in terms of brightness. Nowadays, there is a wide choice of floor coverings, and at very attractive prices. You can therefore have a new floor, lighter and brighter, without breaking the bank and without putting a dent in your next vacation.
However, if you do not have to redo the floor, you can place light-colored rugs there, which will reduce the dark side and bring a little light to the room.
4. Declutter and/or change furniture
An overcrowded and cluttered room is often also a dark room, because it does not allow light to pass through optimally. In a small room, avoid large, massive pieces of furniture that take up a lot of space, and instead choose small pieces of furniture with fine lines which, in addition to saving you space and light, are also more aesthetic.
And to push attention to detail even further, favor closed furniture, in a neutral color or in transparent material.
5. Use mirrors
A mirror transforms a room by playing on perspective and reflecting light. Positioned opposite or near a light source, it will be able to reflect its rays and illuminate the darkest corners of your house or apartment. Do a few tests with different shapes as well as different sizes of mirrors and you will definitely end up seeing an improvement in overall brightness.
6. Improve lighting (artificial light)
Multiply the sources of light by installing floor lamps, ceiling lights, lanterns, or pendant lights. However, make sure that the lighting is well distributed and does not leave shadowy areas in a room. You should also pay great attention to the choice of bulbs, which should provide a pleasant light capable of spreading over the entire surface of the space to be illuminated.
7. Limit the presence of dark colors in the decoration
Paintings, pendant lights, cushions, vases, candles, your decorative elements can darken or lighten your interior depending on the colors highlighted. Just like a room cluttered with too many objects ends up becoming oppressive and less bright. Limit the number of decorative objects and the use of dark colors to a few small touches here and there.
8. Replace solid doors with glass doors
What if your doors became sources of light! By exchanging a solid exterior door for a glass door, you create a new entry point for light into the room served by this door. The idea remains just as good in the case of interior doors, which when transparent provide openness and greater clarity.
9. Bring down a partition
In the extreme circumstances, as long as you are not dealing with a load-bearing wall, you can consider tearing down a partition. On the one hand you will get more space, on the other you will have a brighter and more pleasant surface to live in than small, cramped rooms.