How to make your ceilings appear taller

You can tear down walls, but sometimes it’s not possible to extend the height of the ceiling. That’s the case in our current home and felt particularly problematic in my daughter’s new room due to the fact this space was already teeny tiny. Geez, I hate to quote a Handmaids Tale here but the first thought that came to my mind when working on the space plan was the first line from chapter 2 “A chair, a table, a lamp…” LOL. Hopefully it doesn’t feel like THAT but this room is hella small at about 9x11 feet!

The first thing I did was remove the popcorn ceiling. I know I don’t have to tell you, this single decision makes a huge difference! Popcorn ceilings aren’t just unsightly texture-wise (um hello…my skin in the 90s!), but they also make ceilings appear much shorter, because again, it’s drawing the eye to something that feels “different” from the rest of the walls.

I realize this photo appears “Thriller-esque” with plastic drop cloth over the walls, but you get the idea…

So what else can you do to make a small room appear larger?

No, you can’t actually make the space larger, but you can make it FEEL larger. It’s all about smoke and mirrors and creating the ILLUSION of more space. Any time you are working with a confined space, it’s in your favor to confuse depth perception as much as possible. So where two walls meet (this is not the room for an accent wall!) or where the walls meet the ceiling, should always be minimized.

Once I landed on a wall color (Seaside Villa by Behr), I painted it on the ceiling as well.

The next thing I did was create a sort of “tres ceiling”. Bringing the eye up into the ceiling a bit makes it travel longer and makes the ceiling appear as if it were almost recessed. It’s subtle, but it does feel much more grand.

how to make short ceilings appear taller

Now, if you are familiar with my work, you know I am a huge fan of using tape in place of paint. This is particularly more affordable if you want to “fake” trim or molding. Since this was going to be all the way up on the ceiling where no one would be inspecting it up close, I knew it could look like I meticulously painted it for hours.

(Don’t you love it when there’s no one around to snap a photo of you in action so you do it all yourself with the tape just awkwardly hanging there? LOL)

I used an exacto knife to cut away the excess

how to add stripes to the wall the easy way

and BINGO!

Choosing a small light fixture helps with proportions as well. I had dreams of a tiered crystal chandelier but it won’t make the room feel bigger to have a mama jama light fixture! Keep it small.

And finally, installing an inside-mounted roman shade allows more of the wall to be exposed, thereby making it feel longer.

My best advice is to really pair down and minimize what you include in the room. Make a list of your must-haves. In this case it was a bed (duh), side table (which double as toy storage), and a comfy corner chair for reading books (which was a big one because I wanted to make sure it was adult-sized).