Odd Spaces can make Great Spaces!

If when you read “odd places” in the title of this article and thought, “at last, what I should do with that weird space under the stairs OR that 2 foot by 3 foot niche in the hallway OR that space off the landing on the stairs that’s almost a room, but not quite,” you’ll find the material that follows useful (you’ll find yourself bending these spaces to your will and you’ll also find that you stop cursing the people who created them in the first place).

Odd spaces are the “unusual” areas that may litter your home, the result of previous homeowners’ do-it-yourself efforts or a builder who was just a little too clever for future residents’ space-use plans. These quirky spaces can thwart the plans of even the most determined homeowners.   Odd spaces can seem to be the areas in your home with the least going for them, but you can turn that around—and as home prices escalate and we are, shall we say, “asked” to spend more time at home and you need to incorporate more functionality into your home base—you may have to, to use every square foot in your home to live the life you intend to.

If odd spaces were lovely large zones, bursting, in predictable ways, with all sorts of straightforward use options, we wouldn’t be talking about them here.  Instead, they’re often tiny (although occasionally much too large), regularly dark (although they can be much too bright), and generally don’t delight the nose.  Ceiling heights can be low or dramatically sloping and natural light often merely a dream.

In short, they don’t have much going for them.  They’re not the sort of space that lends themselves to relaxing or to thinking great thoughts, or too much of anything else that’s in your life plan.

Putting design-related neuroscience to work will help make the odd spaces in your home some of the best places there (or at least useful and much better places to spend some time).

Getting the most useful colours on the walls, ceiling, floor, and other surfaces in your odd spaces is the first order of business.  A fresh coat of paint, all by itself, is a mood booster, it signals that action is underway—and it’s even more useful when the right color is being slathered on.

Paint can “regularize” the apparent shapes of rooms and that’s often a plus with odd spaces.  Some people are really into having spaces that are different just to be different, but there is a point when difference without any imaginable value moves into the range of “jarring,” and that’s when paint can make a real difference, by changing, ever so slightly but definitely, the apparent shape and height of spaces.

Light colours make walls seem a little further away than they actually are while ones that are darker colours bring surfaces in close and cosy.  If your odd space is a long thin rectangle, paint the narrower walls a darker colour and the wider ones a light colour and step back.  Your way too thin and much too long room seems much better proportioned now.

The ability to change apparent shapes becomes particularly important when the odd spaces are really wacky shapes, without any parallel walls or walls the same length, for example.  When things are that “interesting” it can be really useful to make some walls seem a little closer or further away to create the impression of a something “almost like” a square or a rectangle or a hexagon or even a circle, some shape that is similar to a room experienced in the past, in real life or a movie.  The goal is not to create a space exactly like one previously experienced but one similar enough to somewhere known in some way, actually or vicariously, in the past so that they can be understood and categorized at a very basic level.

In general, when spaces seem too large or too small be find them stressful places to be and stress distracts us from whatever we have planned, whatever we’d like to accomplish, so your judicious use of light and dark-coloured paints to “make adjustments” is worth the effort involved.  Stress degrades cognitive performance and mood and curdles our ability to get along with other people.

The ceilings in odd places are regularly even odder than the rest of the space.  They’re made out of some material that has previously not been encountered on Earth, prompting the question, “What IS that” from visitors, and most unfortunately, owners.  If not a “unique” material, they are one that seems seriously, seriously out of place, and lead to queries such as “How do you get asphalt to stick to the ceiling” and “Why would you think it was a good idea to put the glass from smashed soda bottles on the ceiling.”

Humans are most comfortable in a space when the darkest colour present is underfoot, the lightest colour is overhead and colours of medium intensity are on the walls.  So, unless you actually want people to be uncomfortable in your odd space, that overhead asphalt has to go, even if it is something of a technical marvel.  A shade of white or very light blue can work well on a ceiling; these very slight colorations will give the ceiling an instant lift and a space with a higher ceiling also seems more spacious.  An exception to the whitish/ very light bluish ceiling colour can be made in bedrooms.  Light bouncing off overhead wood seems to spur the production of melatonin, always a plus in a bedroom or space where you plan to take lots of great naps.

There is other research that may lead you to decide that a warmer or cooler colour is better for your odd space.  If your odd space is a shed in the backyard where heating can, most generously be categorized as problematic, warm colours may be in order because people feel slightly, but measurably, warmer in spaces that feature warmer colours, compared to how they feel in an area with predominantly cooler colours.  If your shed is also very warm in the summer, you’ll have to decide if cooling colours to make the space more hospitable in the summer or warmer colours to make winter use more pleasant are more important to how you want to live your life.  People seem friendlier in warmer coloured areas and feel and seem more powerful in cooler coloured ones, which might also influence your choice.  If your odd space is going to become or remain a corridor, and you’d like people to move as quickly as possible through it, make the wall that you want people to travel toward a warm colour; we’re drawn to warm colours as well as to light, whether that light is daylight or artificial.