How To Alter The Visual Dimensions Of A Room With Paint
Wall paint not only decorates your home, providing ambience and style, but it also alters how large or small a room appears. Read on to discover ways to change your home's apparent proportions through painting.
Visually Expanding Small Rooms
You might wish, in a compact room, that you could push back the walls. Well, you can give the illusion of this by selecting the right wall and ceiling colours. Using pale or upper-mid-toned paint can generate the impression of a larger room. Pale surfaces reflect light, bouncing it around a space, which makes it seem more expansive. Additionally, cool colours like pale blue and green tend to recede. Across a wall, they visually push the surface further away. To add to the illusion, paint the trim and window edging the same hue as the wall to create an unbroken expanse; the consistent wash of colour will make the entire area seem broader.
Apply the same idea across the ceiling by painting it with the same wall hue or making it a shade or two lighter. If you spread contrasting stark-white paint overhead, you will draw attention to the horizontal line where the two surfaces meet. This emphasis will make its low height more apparent.
Shrinking Large Rooms With Paint
Large rooms can seem cavernous and empty at times. If you have generously-proportioned space, you might want to draw the walls and ceiling closer for a cozy effect. To achieve this, make the opposite choices to those above. Select dark, warm hues, with red, yellow or orange tones, which will hug the walls and draw them closer.
Create contrast along the surface so that it seems less bare and empty by adding plenty of variation. Paint trim and moulding in distinct shades, as this will cut up and segment a vast wall expanse. Richly-toned works of art and other accessories will further dissect the area. Apply the same principles to the ceiling. Paint it a deeper shade to draw it closer. If the walls are dark-hued (navy, for instance), don't go too deep for the ceiling so that it seems to disappear into endless space.
In general, stick to pale, cool hues and avoid contrast to make your rooms seem bigger. Alternatively, pick deeper, warmer tones and increase contrast to give the impression of smaller areas. Interior painting services can provide specific advice on paint colours that flatter your home and alter its perceived size.