Interior designers often use a crafty mixture of trickery and illusion to change a room’s appearance when remodeling or structural change is not possible. They also have a bag of tricks to make a low ceiling appear taller. Here are a few of those tricks. If your mobile home has wood paneling and you want to update it without losing the eye-drawing effect use a light paint color. While it’s fine to remove the battens that cover the adjoining seams and tape or caulk them, don’t fill in or cover the other lines made into the paneling. The more vertical aspects you have on a wall, the better. Wallpaper and decals are another great way to add vertical lines to your room. However, another blog states that matte ceiling paint is better for low ceilings because it helps the surface disappear. Personally, I think the high gloss makes a bit more sense, but you may want to test both to see which works best for your home. If you have room to add a taller and wider door, you may find that it creates the illusion of a bigger space and makes the home seem more like a site built structure. Grouping several small objects together in a vertical fashion works great to take the eye up. Since we know that ceiling fans are a great way to help circulate the air in a mobile home, find a fan that doesn’t hang down very far from the ceiling. Interior design experts advise that curtains should be hung no less than two inches from ceiling or wall trim. They also advise that the curtain rods be out of sight or as minimal as possible. If you ask most people what height chair railing should go they will say 36" but that’s assuming your room has 9-foot ceilings. A mobile home with 7-foot ceilings will need 28" chair railings. Chair railings aren’t used to protect the wall from chairs, but rather to divide the walls proportionally. Dividing the wall by 3 provides that proportion perfectly. Another smart technique to make a low ceiling seem taller is to paint the walls above the chair railing the same color as the ceiling. Add a dark color below the chair rail to ground the room. Using the rule of thirds is a good idea to get the correct proportion. Take the height of the room and divide by three, your sofa and chair backs should be as close to that number as possible. Floor length mirrors are best. You add another vertical line to the space and have the added bonus of reflection. Simply use a dark tone on the bottom and go lighter as you go upward, blending the tones to make a natural color progression. Adding bold color to your floors with rugs or carpet is another trick to make a low ceiling seem higher. Bold, bright colors on the floor work to ground the room and drawing the eye down, which somehow tricks the brain into thinking a room is taller. It may not be magic, but it can turn a room into a magical space!
