What are the best colors to make it appear bigger while keeping it kid cozy? Basically, whatever color she likes. The short answer is choose a paint color with a LRV above 50 and one that is perceived as 'warm' and not 'cool'. If she wants pink, for example, choose one that is warmer and rosier like ballet slippers as opposed to one that is cooler and and icier like bubble gum. The long answer to explain why I think that's a good color strategy to achieve what you are wanting from color is: Color is powerful and it influences every single one of us every single minute of every day. We trust color to do many important things like code our environment, organize our tasks, even provide a sense of home and shelter. As powerful as color is, however, it can't make a room bigger or smaller. Nor is it able to literally advance toward you or recede. (Actually, the whole idea of some colors advancing and some receding does not come from the discipline that is architectural color. It comes from fine arts and creating illusions of depth and distance. There's a wealth of misinformation available when it comes to architectural color. This is just one example.) The perception of what color can 'do' in a three-dimensional space, like bigger/smaller or advance/recede, totally lies with the human experiencing that colored environ. If the perception that the 'room is small' is well-established, what you can do to counter that is focus on limiting contrasts and maybe even consider a color palette comprised of just a few colors. Another 'guideline' that seems to apply to many a human is rooms of limited square footage and low to normal ceiling height that are painted with colors of a lighter value can generally produce a feeling of openness. Colors darker in value tend to reign in a room's volume and the positive perceptions they can help create would be an atmosphere of cozy, restrained, safe, secure, sheltered, snug. LRV can help you in this instance. Paint colors with a LRV of 1-50 will be light colors. Paint colors with a LRV of 50-100 will be dark colors. Fifty is the average LRV guideline for interior, residential spaces.

I just want to add that this is a great thread full of lots of practical advice. My home is small, 1200 sq ft with the same # of rooms as yours. The room that feel the smallest (IE the Living ROOM) has too much furniture in it, the seating is overstuffed/oversized for the room, and it has clutter hanging around. My boys share a small bedroom (I think it's almost 10x10). We didn't get a bunk bed because they are crazy monkeys, they have matching twin captain's beds that take up almost the entire room. Furniture that has multiple functions (bed/storage) is so practical for a small house. When we moved in ~12 years ago, I didn't fully realize that most new furniture was scaled for the LARGE homes currently popular, hence how I ended up with living room furniture that is inappropriate for the size of the room. I don't have any unique advice to add except that, for me, it takes a lot of self-discipline not to let the day-to-day stuff pile up. And still sometimes it does and i just keep putting it into a big box until I can deal with it. I have made several pocket organizers that hang on the wall and I think they have helped a lot in terms of adding storage/organization without taking up space.

I love it when you guys start to talk "big picture" like this! Lavender_lass - the current layout (with the dining room and the additional table in the family room is simply a function of the fact that I have all this extra furniture. I definitely want to consolidate eating spaces as part of this. I have thought about swapping the kitchen and dining room and giving a straight shot to the back of the house, but a few things are giving me pause. First off, if I leave the current DR/LR archway intact (that would now become the KIT/LR archway), you see all my kitchen nonsense from the front door, which I don't want. Secondly, if I close off that archway and instead put a hallway across from the front door into the back room, well, I lose the archway (not even sure if it is original, but it is kind of cool looking) and I start to wonder if I'm changing the "style" of the house too much. It's probably a silly thing to worry about, but I like to think my house has a little bit of charm in a cookie cutter sort of way. When people first come in to my house, they are always shocked at how large it feels and I worry that erecting a wall between the DR and LR will kind of kill that. BUT, at this point, i'm not discounting ANY idea, so I'm filing yours away for future pondering =D Jillius, thank you again! I'm definitely considering something like this... I especially like the alotment for cookbook storage -- something I haven't really accounted for in the current design! Benjesbride, we have 2 bathrooms, one on the main floor and one in the basement. BUT, I have grand dreams (lol!) of adding an ensuite. At one point, I was thinking of shrinking the MBR to roughly 10x12 -- yikes!) and cramming in a 3/4 bath (4.5' x 7') and pitifully small WIC, but my current thinking is to relocate the stairs to the side wall of the formal Living Room (it works nicely with the basement below -- dumping out right into the main TV watching area) and reclaim the old stair space as a roomier bathroom/closet for the MBR. Granted, I have NO IDEA what is involved with moving stairs like that, so for now, it's just a dream, lol. You make an excellent point, though, about planning ahead on bringing the utilities over to that area with a future bathroom in mind. Duly noted! Very insightful, Texasgal! I've often thought that the living room is a big blob of unused space, but it does make a nice entrance statement for visitors. Currently it houses some antiques (courtesy of my parents' downsizing). I'm not ready to abandon the "formal living room" concept, but I am thinking of shrinking it, and possibly relocating the stairs to the side wall (see my comments up above) to shrink the space and give it a bit more function. PLUS, the idea of having some sort of open stair railing in this area makes me swoon (can we say HOLIDAY GARLAND?) lol! I do like the idea of the breakfast bar, pantry, etc for the dining room, but the caveat is that it has to be pleasing to look at, as that area has prime visibility to the front door (at one point, I thought of stashing the fridge over there, but I just couldn't get past seeing it when you first enter the house. But then, where to put the dining table? A few times a year, we host family, so while the dining space doesn't have to be FORMAL, it still has to have a presence. I'd like 1 perpetual dining space for 6 post-remodel, with the ability to overtake other areas with tables and whatnot as circumstances dictate. I think i'm going to play around to see if I can visualize some of these awesome ideas you all are putting forth. To summarize what I'll be working with: Keep some sort of formal living room to greet guests (affectionately call it a Parlor or something, lol), but explore shrinking it a wee bit, play around with expanding the kitchen into the current dining space somehow and see if I can get over my reluctance to kill the LR/DR archway, and figure out where we want to spend our time chowing down. As always, you guys rock, thanks SO MUCH!

2 things 1) I commend you on your tidy plans. In plan 2, the kitchen appears to have been sacrificed - your island is really small (weirdly small?) and you (obviously) have no seating in there. Is this how you live today? Or is a "hang out" kitchen on the want list? In some ways the living room is simply out of scale with the rest of the house in plan #2. Could you reconfigure your mudroom entry and tighten it up some in plan #3, moving that dividing wall between it and the living room over some, enlarging the living room? You'd get usable space and in both plans the living room isn't eaten up by foot traffic. 2) in your main bath on this floor might you consider dividing the toilet area and the shower or at least the toilet / bath from the sink so 2 folks can be using the bath at the same time and still have some privacy. Although I guess the laundry bath could be used for teeth cleaning / face washing, etc. too.