Small kitchen designs
Small kitchen designs
30 January 2023

How to visually enlarge a room with tiles?

The subject of a small kitchen is usually an issue for owners of apartments, condos, row houses, etc. When it comes to fighting for every inch of space, often the bedroom or living room become staging areas during cooking prep. The good news however, is that even if it’s impossible to physically increase the surface area, it’s possible to enlarge the space optically! By using kitchen tiles for example.

There is a solution for everything!

The problem of designing a small kitchen is one of the most common issues that investors turn to interior designers with. Fortunately, there are a few proven tricks to hide the weak aspects of a space. Kitchen tiles are one of the basic elements that will distract from the modesty of an area. Properly selected, they will help to visually enlarge the room and make it functional and pleasing to the eye.


Above all else, play with colors

It’s well known that light colors visually enlarge spaces, and dark colors make a space feel smaller. In a small kitchen in an apartment for instance, we should use bright colors, especially when there’s not enough natural light coming in, which unfortunately happens very often when there are other buildings all around casting shade. But remember that the tone of the color also matters quite a bit in these situations. Cool colors help to visually move objects away from one another, while warm colors bring them closer. White glaze on the Cambia white lappato tiles or the Foggia bianco bricks will be a safe solution in a small kitchen. Another important thing to keep in mind is that if we choose the smaller sized tiles, we should then also make the joints between these tiles as thin as possible and we should fill them with grout that matches the surface color of the tiles as close as possible.  Wide joints will emphasize the shape of the entire composition and may draw attention to its small size.

Extra glow

Another way to illuminate the room and thus create the impression of spaciousness will be the glow created by the reflection of natural and artificial light from the polished surface of the tiles. So, consider tiles with a high-gloss glaze, with a fine, white marble pattern for example, as featured on the spectacular Marmo Thassos slabs. This applies to both, kitchen tiles on the floor and on the wall, in the space between the lower and upper cabinets for instance.


Wall tiles in the kitchen will help to “expand” the surface

In the game of size, color is not the only thing that matters. When designing small rooms, the way we orient the tiles is also important. The main rule is that we should lay the tiles horizontally on the plane that we want to expand. Rectangular wall tiles for the kitchen arranged horizontally will optically lengthen the walls. The same principle applies for floors. Here, a “diamond” arrangement is additionally recommended for square tiles, which will help to visually round out the area, and if working with rectangular tiles, shifting them by 1/3 or ½ will help.

Tile patterns for a small kitchen – what to pick?

In a small room, we look for additional space and focus on simple forms, so let’s give up busy decorations and patterns both, when it comes to kitchen tiles on the floor and on the walls. It’s better then, to leave the fashionable azulejo and patchwork motifs for use in larger rooms. Same goes for shapes. A small kitchen is not a place for hexagons, arabesques, fans, or the currently popular three-dimensional tiles. However, if you do not want to use completely smooth tiles, the solution can be a delicate but specific pattern, like those resembling natural stone in the Tacoma White tiles or the slightly more pronounced version of the Masterstone White collection.

The current offer of kitchen tiles from Cerrad is so diverse and broad, that even if the kitchen space that we’re working in is limited, every investor will still be able to find a product that fits their project perfectly. Contrary to popular beliefs, there really are a lot of possibilities because we can play with colors, shades, shapes, sizes, patterns and the orientation of tiles in our arrangements. The effect of expanding the space can be additionally enhanced by properly selected lighting, simple forms of furniture and accessories, and even the presence of mirrors (on cabinet sides or in window niches for example).