If you’ve found your dream house or apartment, but you’re feeling slightly reserved due to it having a smaller than average kitchen – don’t worry. Yes, a large kitchen featuring every appliance under the sun is nice. However, you shouldn’t write off a property’s other good points, just to one negative. Instead, look at how you can make it look bigger. As long as you’ve got space to move around, to cook and clean, you won’t be in any dire situation. Plus, if you’re buying, you can always look at having an extension if the below ideas don’t work out for you.

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Get creative with light

Lighting and mirrors can really help make your kitchen look more spacious. If you’ve got wall space, try to hang a mirror up. Ideally it should go opposite the window, but anywhere is better than not at all. You should look for bright, white, clean lighting that illuminates your entire room, rather than dim, yellow lights. Invest in LED ceiling lights for this reason: you’ll get a fresh, natural light, and you won’t need to worry about dangling or hanging lights. Large lampshades take up lots of space, so opt for lights that sit flush to the ceiling.

Pick the right colors

Using lots of white in your kitchen will instantly make it look larger and more spacious. From painting the walls to the cabinet doors, you’ll give it a clean, fresh look too. Or, try swapping wooden cabinet doors for glass: it gives the illusion of more space too.

Use the right storage

Hopefully your kitchen will already have a full set of cupboards installed, meaning you can figure out how much more storage space you need. Putting in new shelves, both on the walls and inside the cupboards, can buy you a lot more storage space. However, remember that some cupboards will need higher space to store boxes, bottles and large jars. If shelves aren’t giving you enough space, look at putting in sliding trolley draws. These give you a lot more volume, and are easier to access than using lots of shelves. Likewise, you can try installing cabinets on your kitchen walls, and using hanging, portable racks.

Be economical with what you buy

Kitchens can easily get overcrowded because people aren’t economical with what they buy and use. You’ve probably got a lot of wasted space being taken up by old jars and cans of produce that you either don’t eat anymore, have forgotten about, or don’t want. Be ruthless with your grocery shop: don’t keep anything that you ‘might’ eat one day. Instead, if it’s still within its use-by date, pass it onto charities. If you can, store items such as oats, pastas and grains in jars, you’ll be able to save space by cutting down on packaging. If you really struggle with space, try to only buy what you need. Keep the staples in stock, but don’t buy huge packages of food for the sake of it.