Image is credited to the user WelcometoAlville through Flickr’s Creative Commons

Nothing is worse than moving all of your stuff into a new home only to discover that it’s a lot smaller than you remembered on the walkthrough. As many homeowners have learned the hard way, a small room stuffed with a lot of clutter can make it feel as if the walls are closing in on you.

Luckily, there are plenty of ways to open up a small home to make it feel more spacious than it really is. With a little bit of redecorating, you can use light and color to create the illusion of depth and space in even the tiniest of rooms. For example, here are a few tricks that will make even the stuffiest rooms in your house feel large and comfortable.

1)      Put Your Sofa on Stilts. When it comes to purchasing furniture for a small home, it’s not the size that matters – it’s the elevation. Both smaller and larger pieces of furniture can work in a compact room so long as they sit on raised legs. By raising your sofa, bed and/or chairs up on stilts, you allow more light to penetrate the room, which creates a convincing illusion of depth and space. This is especially effective in rooms with large windows.

2)      Clear Up Your Cabinets. Traditional solid-panel kitchen cabinets can easily overpower a tiny kitchen. To make your cooking area appear larger, replace those wooden cabinet doors with glass panes. By allowing you to see all the way through to the back of the wall, glass-paneled cabinets will make your kitchen seem more expansive. To enhance this effect, try to clear out the clutter in your cabinets before you have company over. Unstack your bowls and plates and store some of your lesser-used dishes out-of-sight under your counter or in a closet. You’d be surprised at how well a few empty shelves can make a room seem larger.

3)      Let the Light Shine In. The more windows a small home has, the better. Seriously. Natural light makes any room feel larger, so you should try to let in as much of it as possible. If you don’t have space to install windows, then consider adding glass-paneled doors or skylights to open up your living room or bedrooms.  Even a few frosted glass panels can make a huge difference in how large your room appears.

4)      Open Up Your Doorways. When renovating a small home, try to open up your doorways to make them as tall and as wide as possible. Remove whatever doors aren’t necessary – or invest in pocket doors – to create distance around the house. You can add to this effect by placing a piece of art on a wall directly opposite an open doorway. The art will catch a guest’s eye, causing them to look down the hallway, which will give them the impression that the room they’re in is larger than it really is.

Don’t let a small home stifle your family. The next time you decide to renovate or redecorate, use these tricks to make your living space seem large and luxurious.

Bio: Lucy Clark is a featured writer for DIYMother.org. Last month, she installed a new set of kitchen cabinets using only her tool kit and an unbreakable iron will. She currently lives in North Dakota with her husband and two daughters.