Replacing your bathroom tiles

Making a Kitchen Look Bigger During a Renovation

2 June 2023 by Heather Howell

It's understandable if you want to make your kitchen appear bigger during a renovation without the major surgery of pulling down and rebuilding walls. You can do this with subtle means by thinking about the materials and colours you use and the lines they create. Here are some ideas for visually expanding custom kitchens.

Smooth Flooring

The floor material influences how big the kitchen looks. One approach is to make the surface as minimal as possible and remove intricate details, such as those on patterned tiles. A smoother floor will look less busy, and the room will appear larger. You could opt for polished concrete, which forms a continuous surface that's not broken up into segments. At the same time, the subtle patterns on the concrete look appealing.

An alternate approach is to form lines on the floor that visually expand the room. You can do this with floorboards, as they create a strong linear pattern. If you have a galley kitchen, the planks can help make it seem longer, especially if they're narrow. To make a galley kitchen appear wider, set the planks horizontally. Rather than hardwood timber, you can use laminate or luxury vinyl planks.

Another popular type of flooring is tile. If you want to minimise the lines, use large-format tiles with less grouting. You could also choose grout in the same colour as the tile so the criss-cross joint lines are less prominent and the floor is more uniform.

Glossy Surfaces

Glossy surfaces also help visually enlarge the kitchen. They reflect light around the room, and a brighter kitchen will feel larger. On the other hand, if some areas are dim, this gives a sense of less space.

Glossy surfaces provide a feeling of depth as well. For example, the soft reflections on a stainless steel splashback and countertop give the impression that the surface extends deeper. On the other hand, flat, matte surfaces create an abrupt endpoint. Glossy ceramic tiles, reflective natural stone, and polished concrete also have this effect.

Seamless Transitions

You can also make a kitchen appear larger by blending the transitions between the surfaces so they look seamless. For example, merge the splashback and wall by matching the colours of both to minimise the horizontal break between them. Other ideas include creating a low splashback that will leave a more open, clear wall area or continuing the splashback to the ceiling to minimise transitions.

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