Most rooms feel crowded long before they are full. The cause is rarely the furniture. It is the number of small things asking for attention at once.

Start with what you can remove

Walk through a room and list every object that has no job. Decorative bowls, duplicate lamps and shelves that hold a little of everything all compete with the architecture. Taking a third of them away reveals walls, windows and floor, and the room reads as bigger straight away.

We usually do this in rounds. Clear a surface completely, live with it for a week, then return only what you missed. What comes back tends to be the things you actually use.

Let proportions and light do the work

Once a room is edited, its proportions become visible. A tall window, a long wall, a low ceiling: these are the features worth emphasising. Keep sightlines open, pull furniture slightly away from the walls, and let daylight reach the far corner.

A quieter palette helps too. Two or three tones that stay close in value soften edges, so the eye travels across the room instead of stopping at every object.