I have been living for a week and a half in a temporary house — an apartment next to my parental home. The place is a bit of a ‘pipe drawer’, with few windows and therefore, fairly dark. What a difference with my light Tiny House! It makes me realize how important light is for your mood and how it makes a small space seem bigger. Fortunately, my new Tiny House will also be a wonderfully light house.
Just to be clear: I’m very happy that I can live here temporarily and I’m totally fine with it. It doesn’t make me depressed that I see less light, but a shortage of light does something to you either way. The apartment is a converted garage with large windows and a door on the front, and only small high-placed windows on one side. It gets cold quickly and it is rather dark. I have the sun in the house only in the morning. A world of difference from what I had become accustomed to.
How do you make a house look bigger? Light is an important factor. You can add that in several ways:
Playing with mirrors
One trick often used to make a room look bigger is to hang mirrors. Do you have a sliding door or a blank wall in your Tiny House? Hang a (large) mirror on it and it seems as if the room continues. You can play with light and mirrors and make dark corners brighter by shining incoming sunlight through the mirror in the corner. Or let the light beam of a wall lamp shine on it so that you can also use it in the evening. You can have custom mirrors made to suit your tiny interior. I recently saw in my mother’s brand new bathroom that a very large mirror in a small space, with light behind the mirror can also be very beautiful. Your new bathroom has turned out gorgeous, Mom! Très chic!
A room appears larger by strategically placing a mirror
Windows and height make all the difference
One of the best things you can do if you want to make a small space look and feel big is to let in light from above. In my Tiny House I had a ‘light street’: a row of three skylights that brought a lot of daylight into the house. This, in combination with the high ceiling in the living area, made the house feel very light and spacious. When you walked up to my house from outside you would think: ‘my God what a small house!’. But once you were inside, I often heard guests say: ‘it’s not that small at all!’ or: ‘it looks much bigger on the inside than on the outside!’ I had those skylights to thank for that effect, I can recommend them to everyone.
I really like windows at eye level so you can see out. From my sitting area I had three lines of sight to the outside: the large window in the sitting area, the double doors and the bathroom window, and the kitchen window also a bit. That made a strong connection from outside to inside. A window in the kitchen is also a must-have for me. I want to be able to see outside while I’m cooking, not stare at a blank wall. In my new Tiny House I will get an L-shaped kitchen and I can look out through the greenhouse window panes. When the large glass front between the house and the greenhouse is open, I have a kind of cooking island. That will be lovely!
Light is important
Light really does something to your mood. The color of light has an influence, but also how much time you spend in daylight. It affects your biological clock, your hormone levels, your sleep, your mood, and your energy level. Therefore, when you are going to design your Tiny House or have it designed, think carefully about the amount of daylight you will have in your house. Think about windows and sunlight. Also, about heat, because adding a lot of windows also means that you get a lot more heat into your house in the summer and you have to turn up the heat more in winter.
Placing windows strategically is quite important because it affects the energy needs of your home. My east-facing skylights were perfect: it gave me the benefit of having plenty of daylight in my home, without having the sun shine on them directly causing a lot of heat to enter the house. They were also nice to open wide in the summer.
In six months, I will have a lovely light house again. I’m very much looking forward to that. Until then I guess I should go for a walk more often and get some more daylight that way. That’s a healthy idea anyway. :)
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