How to Make a Large Space Feel Cozy

Large rooms offer a unique interior design challenge. If you have an expansive space and you want it to feel a little cozier and more welcoming, there are some design tips we want to share with you that can help you do just that. A large living room, basement, or attic space can feel a little overwhelming. If you're not decorating it properly, the room can seem endless and empty, so try these decorating methods to bring a sense of cohesiveness to the space and make it not feel quite as vast.

Draw the Eye with Paint

There's a painting trick you can do that will make the ceiling feel a little lower. Very large rooms often feel expansive because of how high the ceilings are. If you can do a visual trick that makes the ceiling seem lower than it is, you can create a cozier effect in the room. Painting the walls in two distinct tones will help draw your eye downwards. Paint everything above a horizontal level a single color and then everything below that horizontal line a different color. This little visual trick is a very inexpensive way to help cover up some of the vast space in a large room.

Use a Room Divider

Another way to make the room feel a little cozier is to place something in there that divides the room. If you have a tendency to place furniture at the edges of a room, try instead to place a large, long piece of furniture like a couch in the center of the room. This visually cuts up the room so it doesn't feel quite as large.

You could use anything from a long couch to a day bed to a row of shelves to even a small waist-high wall. You want to be careful about not hurting the flow of the room, so choose low furniture that is easy to see over. 

When you add furniture near the center of the room, it's more important that you keep the room clean as well. Consider hiring a cleaning service if you can't keep up with it, because it will be much easier to spread dust and dirt around if the space under this furniture is not kept clean.

Another way you can divide the room while keeping it stylistically beautiful is to add a screen. This wouldn't be something you could see over but rather see through. There are several different kinds of screens you could use, like a storage wall that has empty spaces for books, bottles, jars, or knickknacks. There should be enough space between the top of the items and the bottom of the shelves above them so that you can easily see through this screen. That helps preserve the flow of the room while also neatly dividing it.

You could also use an L-shaped sectional, dividing off a section of the room wherever you like. There are lots of different ways you can place a small section of the room separate from the rest of it, so don't feel like you have to limit this decorating idea to the middle or a corner of the room.

You could also choose a screen that you can't see through, and this can serve as a more definitive room divider. This is especially helpful in rooms that are extremely large where you might consider dividing the room in half. A screen can be a decorative, inexpensive way to do that.

Add Some Houseplants

Large house plants can also be a great way to break up some of the space and fill the room. You can use as many or as few as you need to work with the space you have available. To help make the room feel smaller, place your house plants throughout the room rather than at the edges or in the corners. The purpose of adding house plants to a large room is not so much for declaration as it is for making the space feel full rather than empty. So, you'll want to strategically place the plants at the edges of furniture and as close toward the center of the room as possible. Even placing plants along the wall, though, can help make the room feel a little fuller. So, you can try experimenting with different arrangements and see what works best for you.

Create a Corner Nook

Maybe you just want to place a corner of the room off from the rest of the space. You can take a really large room and make a smaller room inside it or cozy little nook without turning it into a large construction project. You can do this with a dividing screen or freestanding walls. The advantage to using something like this to divide off a section of the room is that you can increase or decrease the space as needed.

The corner nook can be turned into an office, meeting room, reading area, or study space, just to give you some ideas of what you could do with it. This can be a very efficient way to utilize your space while also cutting down on the size of a large room.

Split the Room into Zones

You don't have to confine your nooks to the corner of the room. You can also add in other zones throughout the room. Each of these can be designated for a particular purpose. An example of how you might do that would be to create a reading zone, where there is a small bookcase, a comfy chair and overhead lighting. Then, you could have a zone for getting together with friends and conversing, created by pushing some couches together and placing a coffee table in the middle. 

Another zone can be created for breakfasting, created by placing two high stools and a tall table up against the window to look outside as you eat. 

This is just one set of ideas you could use for a large living room space, for example, breaking it up into smaller designated spaces so it doesn't seem quite as large and empty. The use of smaller zones gives the room purpose and makes it seem fuller. 

Use Your Wall Space

Bare spots in the room can make it feel a little empty, and you can fill up the walls by strategically placing paintings, decorations, photographs, and other hangings. Some of the advice we've given you is to pull your furniture away from the walls to help make the room feel a little smaller, but that also creates empty space along the walls. You can fill that up by hanging some things around the room, and this will help make the room feel fuller and less empty.

Be careful about overdoing it by placing things everywhere and trying to fill up all the free space. That's not necessary to make a large room fill less vast. Simply adding a few things here and there can minimize the space for you, so try adding a little at a time before you go crazy with it.

Use Textures and Patterns

To break up the monotony of a large space, you can implement different textures in the walls, floors, and decorations. These break up the space nicely, as does the implementation of various patterns. Both changes in textures and in patterns will serve to make large spaces look a bit smaller, cozier, and more inviting. 

They create a sense of multiple spaces existing in one. In one part of the room, you have a leopard print, and in another, a zig-zag pattern. You can use smooth textures in one section of the room and rough textures in another. Adding a soft, fuzzy rug creates a separation of the environment in a room where part of the floor is bare and hard. These kinds of additions break up the space nicely and keep the room from feeling too big and overwhelming. 

In that vein, you can use an abundance of soft fabrics in the room to make it feel warm and welcoming. Placing soft pillows or a soft blanket on a couch to snuggle up with makes the massive size of the room seem less harsh. A soft rug under your feet creates a sense of coziness and warmth, especially when your bare feet come into contact with it.

If you are struggling with how to utilize a spacious and empty area, then hopefully some of the ideas we have given you will be helpful. Knowing what makes a large space look a bit smaller and more welcoming is helpful if you want to create a cozy environment. Those expansive living rooms, dining rooms and even bedrooms can become more comfortable with the right touches. If there is a big room in your home that you feel uncomfortable in and that doesn't seem quite as useful or well-designed as it should be, then our suggestions may help you make more sense of it and use it more effectively.