Changing the shape of a room with paint
There are lots of things to consider when you've got a room to paint. Colour, tone, light, finish, quality... all of these things can have a big impact on the look of a room. But did you know you can also use colour to change the perceived shape and size of a room? Here's a few ways you can use paint to your advantage in those less than perfect-shaped rooms.
Long rooms
Going warm and dark on shorter walls will bring them closer to you.
Long rectangular rooms can sometimes feel corridor-like, sparse and even too big. If your room is rectangular, painting the 2 shortest walls in a warm colour will visually shorten the length of the room by bringing the walls closer towards you. The key here is the warm colour - a cooler tone will make the wall recede visually whereas warmer colours make the wall advance.
If you've got a long room and you want a feature wall, make sure it's one of the shorter walls. Drawing your eye to that wall will again pull it closer to you visually thus balancing the dimensions in the room.
Short rooms
Darkening the longer walls (and the ceiling too if you're brave) will elongate the room.
Using the same theory, we can make shorter rooms feel longer.
By darkening the longest walls and painting the furthest wall a light (cool toned) colour will make that light wall feel like it's even further away, thus elongating the space. If your ceilings are high enough you can double down on this effect by painting the ceiling in the same colour too.
Small rooms
Ikea uses warm earthy accessories and a similar tone throughout this small room.
Whether or not you go dark or light is less important in really small rooms, it's more about reducing contrast and choosing the right tone.
It's best not to have too much contrast in a small room, so painting all the walls (including the ceiling) the same colour will help make the room feel bigger. Using similar toned furniture and accessories will also help.
Again tones are important, so cool tones (rather than warm) are also better for smaller rooms as they recede more.
Ceilings
Bringing the ceiling colour down onto the wall will make it look higher.
We quite often neglect the 5th wall in the room - the ceiling. Painting a ceiling is a daunting idea (and also painful for the arms...) but it can also be used to change the perceived dimensions of the room.
Painting a ceiling dark will bring it closer to you, so is a good option for rooms with high ceilings that you want to feel more intimate. Painting the ceiling white is better for low ceilings to help them appear higher.
A good trick to help ceilings appear higher is to bring the ceiling colour down a few inches onto the wall. Either literally just mark a straight line with painters tape and paint the wall above the same colour as the ceiling, or install a picture rail if that's what you're into.
Hopefully this has been helpful to explain the difference that colour can make to the perceived size of your room. Get painting!
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