How Horizontal Lines Make Rooms Feel Wider

Horizontal lines in a room move your eyes outward helping to make the narrow side of a room feel larger.  This effect isn’t limited to lines like painted stripes on walls.  Horizontal lines from long book shelves, rafters across a ceiling, rectangular area rugs, couches including L shapes with shorter lounges, and even wall art can create this room expanding effect. 

Here’s an example.  In this drawing of a room, the size of the wall in the back is the exact same.  The lines across the floor on the right side make the room appear wider, and narrower, but longer in length on the left side.

These lines can also be used to distract from odd shapes like an A frame ceiling that creates a narrow and claustrophobic feeling.  The horizontal lines optical illusion is extra important here as these shapes tend to skew towards vacation homes like a ski cabin and chalets where you want people to relax.

Some studies like this one say that it is the pattern density that matters more than the lines themselves. Other studies like this one tested both horizontal and vertical lines to see their impact on making a room feel wider or taller.  And you can find studies that say horizontal lines don’t impact the feel at all.

Regardless if a study says lines do or do not have an impact, one thing we know for certain is that interior design professionals almost always use horizontal lines to make narrow walls feel wider as a rule of thumb.  Here’s a few ways that you can use horizontal lines to make a narrow room in your home feel more expansive, or complete.

Centering Eyes to a Focal Point

Imagine you’re in a cabin and there is a large brick fireplace that extends up through the angled roof.  The odd angles and diagonal lines bring eyes upwards and may seem tricky to center and expand at first.  This is where horizontal lines come in.

By placing a thick horizontal mantle above the opening on the fireplace, you break the upwards flow and keep eyes on a focal area lower in the room.  The focal area in this case is where the fire is and the space up to the mantel where you have decor items.  These keep eyes focused on the main features like the flames and stop them from drifting higher than the decor items to the ceiling.  

For larger rooms, open floor plans, and longer spaces, see if you can use horizontal rafters or hang a ceiling fan or a few with large blades to help close the room height wise.  The horizontal rafters and lower hanging ceiling fans help make the space feel complete without removing the airy and open expanse of the cabin’s shape.  Afterall, the height of the frame is part of the ambience for cabin living and vacation rentals.

Rooms That Are Long in Length Short in Width

In large cities and some modern single family homes, you’ll find rooms that are long in length but narrow in width.  By adding stripes across the narrow walls, or using wood flooring where the lines go horizontally in the direction of the narrow side, you create the room expanding effect.  These lines bring peoples’ eyes from one side to the next visually instead letting them focus on a solid and narrow wall.  

If you go along the longer side it makes the room feel more like a hallway because the lines become “leading lines” and show the length vs. focusing on the width.  Leading lines are an art and interior design technique to bring your eyes from one spot to another.  

Here’s an example.  In the two images below there is a circle in the room.  When you add the leading lines in the lower one your eyes move towards the circle.  Without the leading lines your eyes process the entire image without movement.  

By adding horizontal lines across the narrow wall you bring eyes to the longer walls vs. focusing on the narrow width helping it to feel larger.  If you go with vertical lines or flooring that brings leading lines along the length, you’re going to create a more narrow appearance visually.  

Using Furniture to Create Horizontal Lines

When you’re trying to make narrow rooms feel wider, the back of a long couch, a rectangular area rug, or a lengthy bookshelf can be equally as effective as horizontal stripes on the walls and floor boards.  Just like physical lines on the walls, the long end of the couch draws your eyes outward vs. along the length helping the room to feel wider.

If you have windows along the backside, find an area rug that runs the length of the room and where the ends meet up towards the far side of the windows.  Your eyes will follow the leading lines of the carpets to the windows where natural light and the outside world can be seen.  This helps open the space making it feel wider than it is.

And a horizontal bookshelf or long cabinet that expands along the wall but is not too tall vertically can have a similar effect.  Place vases or photos across the top to keep eyes focused on the horizontal length vs. having the height dominate creating a smaller feeling space.  Sectional couches can also work well here as you can split two of the ends and leave a coffee table in the middle to keep the horizontal lines in tact as you have guests over.

Making narrow rooms feel wider is easy when you know how to work with horizontal lines.  They’re an interior designer’s secret weapon.  Now that you know this trick, see how you can use it to open up your space.