Does A Dark Accent Wall Make A Room Look Smaller

As nancy wrote in this great post high contrast.

Does a dark accent wall make a room look smaller.

It s an optical illusion that makes your world feel larger much like the lighted stage in a darkened theater is the whole world at that moment. A design trick that makes small spaces seem larger dark colors read as receding from the viewer so the accent wall visually enlarges the space and sets up a nice contrast that can. Dark colors make the walls recede to the background of your consciousness and the contents and people in the room become the center of your attention. In high traffic common areas like kitchens dark accent walls make for genius options as they re easier to keep clean and require less fuss all around notice how the bottle green walls lend this farmhouse inspired kitchen polish and an old world inviting spirit while making the space look larger and brighter by painting the walls around the windows to emphasize the rooms natural light.

And leaving the window wall a light color fools the eye into experiencing the whole wall as a light source. Painting an accent wall in a dark shade visually pushes it backward giving the room. My bedding is light i have silver accents in frames that i need to hang up to help break up the dark. Paint a room in a color that s on the darker side and you may make a light filled room feel smaller.

Dark accent colors such as navy gray or red can make a space look larger when you limit their use to one wall. Small rooms can be tricky to decorate beyond the simple issue of having to triple measure furniture for size and crafting the best layout for your space paint color can actually have a huge impact on how big or small your space feels and this decision goes beyond pure color choices. Darker colors can make a room feel cozy and personable. I love that too.

It s not the color of the walls that make a room look smaller. When walls are a deep color and trim is white or another light color the eye notices the borders of the space. The key is instead of painting the entire space in a dark color to just paint one wall or a single element like a bookcase as seen in the image above from royal roulotte dark colors read as receding from the viewer so the accent wall visually enlarges the space and sets up a nice contrast that can make the rest of the space seem brighter by comparison. If the room is small this will accentuate the feeling of enclosure.

I painted it a dark blue and love it. In a much smaller room i took the doors off of a small closet and just made it shelving for an office space painting the back wall of the shelves a dark grey with white shelving.