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As someone who lives in a pretty small house, playing around with it and finding ways to style it whilst keeping it nice and bright can be a bit of a task. I'm a big fan of the bohemian interiors style so I love to fill my house with lots of character, but going to overboard tends to obstruct the light coming through the windows and leave my rooms looking a bit dark. I've learned this the hard way by buying new furniture and having massive regrets! With that in mind, I thought that I'd share my top three tips for keeping your home nice and bright so that hopefully someone else avoids making the same mistakes that I've made...
choose your paint wisely
Dark colours can work really well in not only big, bright spaces but smaller, darker spaces too. It ultimately depends on the layout of your room and what decor you choose to go for - however I think for keeping things rerally bright and airy, sticking with lighter colours works the best. With lighter colours, the natural light bounces off them which in turn creates a more well lit space. I recently painted my lounge in a greige/stone colour and whilst it's not totally dark, you can see the difference in the brightness of the room from when it was painted all white. I think adding colour was more important to me for this room in particular, but next time I paint I'll be making sure I choose more off white/light grey shades so that I can add colour whilst keeping my rooms well lit.
You can also add panelling on one wall like I did in my bedroom & kitchen, where you only paint a section of the wall (in my case, the bottom half) and that way it adds colour without painting the entire room. You can buy wall panelling kits that come in really handy for this!
minimise your window area
Windows are the most important factor when it comes to keeping your home lovely and brightly lit. You want all of that natural light to fill the rooms and bounce off all the walls. I have curtains in almost every room in my house but eventually I hope to have blinds everywhere instead. The type that I want are a bit of an investment so I opted for curtains to begin with which I love, but I find curtains do tend to block some of the light from coming in. I have curtain holdbacks which I find helps as they hold my curtains to the side so that the light block is minimal. In my kitchen, I still haven't got any blinds up on the window or the patio doors so the kitchen is always extremely bright and lit really well. I'm hoping to keep it this way even when I do add blinds as the beauty of blinds is that they can just be rolled right up to the top and they're never in the way. It's also worth noting that putting any high furniture near the window will block light too. Again, I learned this the hard way because I bought myself two bookshelves for my lounge by the window area and now I'm full of all the regret and want rid of them ASAP.
invest in large windows
Big windows are the way forward if you're doing building renovations! It's my dream to have a house with really tall windows, like a victorian property. Large windows are amazing for filling a home with lots of bright light, however you do have to be careful in winter with your heating bills so make sure you invest in good quality, strong glass and well insulated windows that won't let all the heat out. I did have an incident at my parents house with the big window in my bedroom there, the window is quite a wide one and as it's in the countryside and faces lots of open fields, more than one bird has flown straight into the glass and knocked themselves out. You can never be too safe with children and pets either so I would always make sure to have toughened laminated glass in the home and not just for the windows. TuffX have some fab options and will have all the best advice to give you if you're currently renovating.
What's your top tip for a bright space?
