How to make a Narrow Hallway Wider: 12 Tips from a Pro

Making a narrow corridor wider or making it look wider is a task that we can achieve through a series of efficient and effective solutions when applied correctly.

And that is what we are going to see next: 8 effective solutions to make a narrow corridor seem wider, bigger .

Choose one or those solutions that you can implement in yours. The more of them you can apply, the wider your hallway will appear.

You can watch the video just below where I tell you how to make a narrow hallway look wider or you can see the photos and ideas with text below the video.

Paint it all white

You only have to see this before and after of the narrow corridor that we see above this paragraph, to realize the great difference between a corridor painted in dark colors and a corridor painted in light tones.

Which one do you think is wider?

It’s exactly the same hallway.

They have removed that horrible gray and instead painted everything a pristine white, ceiling and walls and the result is spectacular.

Decorative moldings have also been added to the walls, but these do not influence the visual effect of making it wider.

The big change comes only from the color change .

So if you want to make your narrow hallway look wider, you can start by painting it all white .

You will notice a huge difference, especially if you now have it painted in dark colors.

Let’s see the following solution to make your narrow hallway wider:

Paint everything the same color

Not only are you going to make the hallway look wider by painting everything a light color , which also works, as we saw above.

The trick, in this case, is to paint everything the same color , especially light shades like white.

And when I say everything I mean everything: Walls, ceiling and floor . Obviously, you may not be able to paint the floor white.

Why does painting everything the same color make a narrow hallway look wider? Easy:

Because the eye has no visual limit and does not perceive contrast between one color and another and this translates into a greater visual amplitude .

You just have to look at the narrow corridor above these lines.

It has the walls, floor and ceiling painted the same white and there is no contrast to look at, nor any limits, and the corridor becomes visually wider, wider.

Take a look at this other aisle and see the difference:

The walls have been painted white, and the ceiling a yellow tone, and as you can see, although they are light and bright colors, by giving the eye a visual limit, it perceives the contrast and the visual amplitude disappears .

In fact, this effect does just the opposite of what we want to do. It makes the narrow hallway look narrower.

Thus, in addition to painting it in light tones, if you can paint absolutely everything white , you will remove visual limits and contrasts and everything will be much broader visually speaking.

Let’s move on to the next solution to make a narrow hallway look wider:

Paint in cool tones

If you are not convinced by white and you would like to add a touch of color to your narrow hallway and still make it appear wider , then use cool colors.

Cool colors are green, blue, and violet in all their tones and undertones.

Why is using these colors going to make your hallway look wider?

Because cool tones create the effect of receding and make spaces painted in these colors appear deeper .

It’s all because of the wavelength in which the eye perceives these colors.

As it is a short wavelength, it is very difficult for the eye to focus and perceive cold tones, which results in creating the illusion that they move away, that they recede, and this in turn makes us see the painted spaces wider cool colors .

Of course, although it works in all cold tones, it is better to use cold tones, but light ones, such as light blues or light greens, since they are brighter and reflect a higher percentage of light than dark ones.

Let’s continue with the following solution that you can implement to make your narrow hallway look wider:

Install mirrors

At this point it goes without saying that mirrors make spaces seem larger .

It is universally known.

So, if you want to make your narrow hallway look much wider , as if by magic, you just have to install mirrors .

And if you install them facing each other , you will multiply this illusion to infinity (literally).

In addition, this solution to make narrow corridors look wider is also decorative, so you will add an extra decorative bonus to the decoration of your corridor.

Of course, try to install mirrors that are not very thick and deep , otherwise they will “eat” a lot of visual space.

Better bet for mirrors with a thin and narrow frame, similar to the mirror with a thin white frame that we see in the corridor above these lines.

This solution is extremely effective, but it is even more so if we have cabinets in the hallway:

If you have closets in the hallway, a great solution to make it appear wider, more spacious and brighter, is to install mirrors on the closet doors .

This way you will create a large mirrored surface that will multiply the light and the visual space and your hallway will take on another extra dimension.

There are more ideas and solutions to make your hallway look even wider, like the one below:

Light rugs with horizontal lines

Design and Photography Jonesville

If you want to add a rug to your hallway, then you have another great opportunity to not only decorate it, but also make it visually wider.

How?

Choosing a rug in light colors and, especially, with horizontal stripes .

Why? Well, if you have read the solutions above, you may have noticed that one of them was to paint everything white or light colors.

But in many, practically in the majority of houses, the floor cannot be painted.

Thus, by putting a white carpet that covers a large part of the floor, we will have transformed that floor into a white one or at least a large part of it.

Also, if we choose the rug with horizontal stripes , like the one we see in the hallway above these paragraphs, we will guide the eye from left to right and visually make the hallway appear wider .

This is the same as when you put on a striped shirt and you look wider, right? It is because we guide the eye from left to right and vice versa and you gain horizontal depth.

For this reason, installing a carpet in light colors and with vertical stripes is one of the best and easiest ways to make a narrow corridor wider.

Let’s see another, there is more:

Create a subtle focal point

Photography by Laura Gummerman in A Beautiful Mess

If we create a subtle focal point, we will guide the eye to that point , causing the “flaws” of the corridor, such as, for example, that it is very narrow, to be overlooked, since the eye has the attention on that focal point.

That is what focal points are created for.

That said, as you can imagine, the idea is to create a subtle focal point, because if not, we will overload the space , and that is the last thing we want to achieve in a narrow corridor that we want to make wider.

Thus, you can put, for example, some subtle paintings with some color accents , like the corridor that we see above, which do not saturate or overload the corridor, but they do attract the eye’s attention .

A small plant, a nice lamp or wall light… Anything you want is worth it, as long as it is subtle and guides the eye towards it.

Let’s see more ideas:

Narrow furniture please

In many corridors we have no choice but to add a piece of furniture.

Either because that corridor is the hall or because we need storage space at home and it is the only place we can put one more piece of furniture.

That’s fine. Take advantage of all the meters of our house.

But you have to do it right and, above all, with common sense.

So, if you have to have a piece of furniture in your corridor, it is better that this piece of furniture is narrow so that it does not “eat” a lot of land or overload the corridor.

Today you have furniture that adapts to small spaces, in a very narrow format, such as these 25 narrow consoles, but really narrow .

Leaving aside the furniture, decoration and colors, we only have one point left to deal with to make a narrow corridor look wider: Lighting.

Correctly illuminates the corridor

This corridor that we see just above, is a narrow corridor and, in addition, poorly lit.

Notice the shadows cast by the ceiling lamps.

They make the hallway look gloomy, sad, and smaller than it appears.

Look at the following corridor:

This is a much better lit hallway.

Recessed spotlights do not create shadows and give a more homogeneous and uniform lighting , which makes the light reach all corners, making the corridor look wider.

With this I do not mean that you cannot install hanging lamps in your hallway, if that is what you want.

But if those lamps create shadows, in addition to the lamps you should also install other lighting such as spotlights, LED footlights, wall sconces, ceiling lights or another of the many solutions that exist so that there are no shadows in the corridor and it is well lit.

It is useless to paint the entire corridor with a bright color, install mirrors on the walls, put narrow furniture or carry out any of the other solutions that we have seen, if there is not correct lighting .

Good lighting alone makes a space appear larger and brighter .

Bad lighting throws away all the solutions we have adopted.

The more solutions you can implement in your corridor, the wider it will be or seem. Now you can see these other 50 ideas to decorate a narrow hallway.

And if you think this article can help a friend or family member, share it, so they can take advantage of these solutions. Thank you!

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