Divide Up Your Space, Japanese – Style
In general, adding more walls to an already small space makes the entire place feel smaller. Sometimes, though, you need to give an area of your apartment or condo the feel of its own room – but only temporarily. Perhaps a niece is coming to visit and you want to give the child her own bedroom, or you have friends coming from out of town and they’ve asked to spend a couple nights with you. You might benefit from a room divider if you’re working on a project of some sort, whether it be a sewing, craft, or home renovation task that doesn’t look very pretty right now, but can be effectively contained in its own area of your home. Enter Japanese screens, stylish solutions for creating a distinct-feeling room in an otherwise open space.
Japanese designers already do many things right (we’ll discuss more feng shui approaches in another post), but Japanese screens are one of my favorites. If you place a light source behind them, they admit a warm, soft glow to the rest of the room, which makes the space appear larger and more airy. The screens are not just functional; they are stylish and classy in and of themselves. With a fan-like shape, they take up very little room when folded up, and can easily be stored flat and upright in the back of a closet. They may be more expensive than a more typical (but ugly) room divider or a curtain on a rod, but you can bring them with you to your next home when you move. The aptly-named Room Divider Store has a website with hundreds of Japanese-style screen dividers that you can purchase online, if you are so inclined. They’re also just nice to look at and to get some ideas for your future room designs!