HGTV Stars Showcase 11 Ways To Make A Kitchen Feel Larger Without Moving Walls

As the old adage goes, the kitchen is the heart of the home. It's where meals are made and family and friends come together. However, your kitchen may not feel like the heart of your home if you feel suffocated by a lack of space every time you go to cook. Its not uncommon to have a small or strangely shaped kitchen that cramps your style. But luckily, the stars of HGTV's home improvement programming have plenty of strategies to make your kitchen design feel on par with the important role it plays in your home. 

According to Angi, kitchen demo to move a wall is priced anywhere from $1,000 to a whopping $10,000 depending where you live. Assuming you can't shoulder that cost to entirely renovate your kitchen for more space — or maybe you're limited by being a renter or architectural restrictions – you still don't have to live with a kitchen that feels claustrophobic. From adding lighting and implementing new storage features, to changing up the color of your paint or flooring, HGTV hosts are chock full of ideas for making your kitchen feel larger — and more pleasant to be in, as a result. 

A remodel-free way to make your small kitchen feel bigger is to update your cabinet color to a shade that is light in value and bright in hue. This is a top tip from "Property Brothers" star Jonathan Scott, who told The Kitchn, "Lighter colors help bounce light around and feel cleaner and brighter." But before you go all in on the all-white look, also take into account his advice to use a little contrast: "But I love a little color—stained wood, blues, greens." The point is that lighter-colored cabinets with accents of color can go a long way to making a small kitchen feel bigger.

You can see this advice at work in Season 6, Episode 1 of "Forever Home." In that episode, the brothers leverage white cabinets and a white backsplash to create a fresh space. But far from being a blank space, the matte black light fixtures punctuate the space with a modern finish. In addition, the island is finished with a soft blue beadboard for a splash of color.

When it comes to brightening up your cabinets, white isn't the only option. You can paint your cabinets in alternate shades, like sea foam green or pale pink. As mentioned above, any light color will reflect light, but dark, heavy tones won't.

Kitchen peninsulas are great gathering spaces for people in your kitchen, especially if you don't have a proper dining room. Erin Napier endorsed this idea in an episode of Season 8 of "Hometown." The open living room and kitchen layout was essentially a big box that Napier said felt more like a hallway. The island did the layout no favors, so Napier proposed a kitchen peninsula instead: creating more seating for when people come over, while also signaling a transition from dining room to kitchen.

Kitchen peninsulas, which are essentially L-shaped counter extensions, create a comfortable spot for family or friends to gather. In addition, most peninsulas can be configured to have a set of cabinets below for much-needed storage in a small kitchen. Going with a peninsula also gives a more open, spacious feel through the center of the kitchen as opposed to an island. In a smaller kitchen, the addition of an island might make the space feel completely overwhelmed because it sits in the middle of the room, whereas a peninsula feels like a more seamless, natural extension of the existing kitchen counters. Plus, integrating a kitchen peninsula versus an island generally ends up being a lower cost investment. 

Another way to make a small kitchen feel bigger is to supersize the cabinets. Mina Starsiak and Karen Laine of HGTV's "Good Bones" consider ceiling-height cabinets to be a trademark of their kitchen designs. When sharing expert kitchen design tips for HGTV, the mother-daughter renovators explain that they often use double-stacked cabinets or add crown molding to upper cabinets because of the impact it makes. The duo makes it a point to leave no gap between the top of the kitchen cabinets and the ceiling. Explaining the effect of ceiling-height kitchen cabinets, Laine said, "It's not how far your feet can move, but how far your eye can move that lets your brain know how big a space feels." 

As Laine points out, this strategy works by using vertical height to draw the eye upward. As you look up, it creates the illusion of a larger space. Achieving the look doesn't require moving any walls but it does need a hefty budget for custom cabinets. As an alternative, you might be able to find prefab cabinets that fit your space. Keep in mind that a downside of ceiling-high kitchen cabinets is that accessing the highest cupboards will mean getting out a step stool or ladder. As a workaround, some people use the very top cabinets for items that don't get used very often.

One way to give a small kitchen a glow-up that makes it feel larger is under-cabinet lighting. While sharing small kitchen tips for HGTV, Joanna Gaines shows how under-cabinet lights illuminate a 150-square-foot galley kitchen. Thanks to the LED under-cabinet lights, the galley kitchen has a warm glow on both sides. Gaines explains why this is such a good move for small kitchens, "What's great about these is that they cast a light down on your backsplash and countertop. So again, it gives your space the illusion that it's bigger than it really is."

If you want to put this small kitchen strategy to work for you, you can have an electrician hardwire under-cabinet lights for you. As a DIY alternative, you can use stick-on puck lights that operate using batteries for a 'spotlight' effect under the cabinets. Or, you can use a battery-powered LED light strip or light bar for more effusive light along the length of each cabinet.

The Property Brothers sometimes opt to give appliances a seamless look by using cabinet facades. Panel-ready appliances are appliances that look unfinished on the front. These panels are prepped to accept a cabinet facade that matches the cabinets in your kitchen. It's almost like putting your appliances in hiding and gives your space a more cohesive look. In Season 8, Episode 7 of "Celebrity IOU," Jonathan says, "Everything's integrated—it just makes it look clean, the aesthetic is minimal, which is nice." The brothers also used this approach to give a dramatic effect to the refrigerator with a moody, dark facade that matches the rest of the cabinets in Season 14, Episode 5 of "Property Brothers"."

In small kitchens, appliances can really stick out like a sore thumb, but when the facade blends into the rest of the cabinets, it creates a streamlined appearance. Keep in mind that picking panel-ready appliances does limit your model options. And using this tip to make your small kitchen feel bigger requires buying new appliances, so it's most often done when you're planning a whole kitchen remodel. That said, this project may not be for you if you're on a tight budget or looking for a lower-maintenance way to make your kitchen feel bigger.

In Season 2 of "Flip or Flop Vegas," HGTV stars Aubrey and Bristol Marude give a small kitchen a double dose of light with mirrored cabinets. It's no secret that mirrors bounce light, which is why they're often used by designers to make a small space feel bigger. Incorporating the mirrors into the cabinets is a fresh take on the mirror trick. And it's a great way to leverage the flat surfaces of cabinet doors in a way that sends light to every corner of the room.

If your small kitchen could use a dose of light, but it's not in your budget to replace every cabinet front, you can still apply this design principle in your space. Opt to add a large mirror, or a couple of smaller decorative mirrors, to the walls in your kitchen in order to open it up visually. If your kitchen architecture allows, try to place your mirror directly opposite of a window. This positioning will maximize the reflection of light, making your kitchen seem as big and bright as possible.

Small kitchens that share space with a dining table can feel especially cramped. Once you factor in floor space for the table and room to move the chairs in and out, the square footage can disappear quickly. That was the challenge faced by Keith and Evan in a home renovated during Season 1 of "Bargain Block." To give the small eat-in kitchen more breathing room, Keith and Evan use a banquette instead of a more conventional dining table with a set of four chairs. It features a bench seat along two walls and a pair of chairs to provide functional seating.

It's no surprise that banquette seating is trending for 2026 because this feature looks great in so many kitchens. But banquette sets work especially well in a small kitchen because they sticks close to the wall and maximize every bit of floor space. Amp up your small kitchen's potential even further by getting a hollow banquette bench with a lift top, such as the Hokku Designs Kitchen Breakfast Nook Bench. This adds a whole new dimension of storage, perfect for storing away small appliances that may otherwise crowd and clutter limited counter space. 

In Season 13, Episode 1 of "Property Brothers," Jonathan and Drew elect for light beige floors for a family's small kitchen that was under renovation. The choice is not a surprising move since the pair often pick light-colored floors to brighten up a small kitchen. As another example, in Season 1, Episode 10 of "Property Brothers: Forever Home," the design duo choose a similarly light flooring option for a family kitchen renovation. Jonathan said, "the light tone helps bounce the light around." If you also opt for light-colored kitchen cabinets, you'll maximize the effect of these strategies for brightening up a compact kitchen. This can be especially important in kitchens that are closed off from the rest of the house. Keeping the space as airy as possible will make it feel larger.

Choosing light-colored floors is a strategic choice for small kitchen spaces but there's another reason to go this route: Light color flooring hides dirt better than dark-colored floors. Perhaps that seems counterintuitive, but dust and human or pet hair tends to show up more against a dark background. It tends to be less noticeable with blonde, gray, or other light-toned flooring options.

In an episode of "Bargain Block," Keith Bynum opted to use patterned counters and flooring to make a small galley kitchen feel bigger. The floor featured a white-and-gray patterned mosaic tile in a small format to keep the look visually interesting without overwhelming the compact space. And the countertop was butcher block laid in a herringbone pattern for a more subtle effect that didn't compete with the floors.

This look works so well because the kitchen is rich with detail to entertain the eye. At the same time, it's well-balanced so that it doesn't look too busy. To use this trick to make your own small kitchen feel bigger, choose just one focal point of patterned design and give other aspects a supporting role. For instance, if you go for a patterned floor tile or a unique tile installation pattern for a bold kitchen backsplash, choosing more subtle finishes for your cabinets or countertops can help strike the balance.

When you don't have a lot of room to work with, a fixed kitchen island can really dominate floor space. By skipping the island and keeping your floor more open, your kitchen will feel larger. But if you still have a need for more usable surface area and storage space, a table or bar cart can be helpful where an island is out of the question. That was Jasmine Roth's advice in a segment for HGTV about upgrading your kitchen space: "It would be really easy to just add like a table or a bar cart or something very simple to the center of a kitchen and suddenly you have an island." 

Roth did exactly that in one of her kitchen designs, adding a counter-height table with open legs for visibility and stools for extra seating. But in especially tight spaces, a bar cart may be the best fit. While it won't give you a counter-height work surface, it can come in handy for keeping baking and cooking supplies within reach during kitchen tasks. And the best part? You can push a bar cart out of the way when you're not using it. 

The right lighting can make or break the perception of space in a small kitchen. While sharing expert kitchen design tips for HGTV, Karen Laine of "Good Bones" said, "I know people love pendant lights, but in my opinion, they break the visual field. They stop your eye and and your kitchen looks smaller." So while pendant lights make a statement, they may have too much visual weight for a compact kitchen.

Instead, Laine's co-host Mina Starsiak prefers to utilize can lights in the kitchen. She explained, "You get all this light but there's nothing impeding your view throughout the entire kitchen. So it's just this one big, light, bright space." Recessed lights, also known as can lights, offer aesthetic appeal but come with other advantages, too. Typically, LED lightbulbs for these fixtures are energy-efficient and long-lasting. But don't attempt this electrical project at home if you're not a professional. If you don't already have recessed fixtures, you will need a qualified electrician to perform wiring and installation.