One of the quickest and easiest ways to update a room is by painting it. Not only does paint freshen up the look of a room, but it can also make a room appear larger or smaller than it actually is. By using the proper balance of colors, you can make any room appear to be bigger than it actually is.
Go Light
The first thing that you want to consider is the color of the walls. Light colored paint will reflect light and allow it to bounce around the room giving it the appearance of being spacious. The room will look both bigger and brighter.
Minimize Contrast
Much of decorating a room is illusion. Some illusions are stronger then other, but your eye can trick your brain into assuming extra space exists if you can create a subtle optical illusion. By painting moldings and trim in lighter colors than the walls, you will make the walls appear to recede just a little, and this gives the illusion of extra space. If you use cool colors on the walls like grays, greens and blues, they will fade even further away from you. If you use warm colors on the walls like yellows, oranges and tans, the walls will move towards you making the room feel a little smaller. So obviously in this application you would want to stick with a cool color palette.
Pale and Neutral
Keeping wall colors pale and neutral will also help them recede into the background. Since they do not grab the eye’s attention, they help to create a further illusion of open space, which again helps to make the room feel larger than it actually is.
White Means Height
Painting a ceiling white is a very common choice for many homeowners. As it turns out, a white ceiling is an excellent choice for making a room appear taller than it actually is. While white sounds like a no brainer solution for your ceiling color choice, since white tends to make any color that it sits next to appear darker, your light walls may suddenly appear darker and shrink the room. The trick then is to paint the ceiling a pale color without having it be stark white. By adding a tiny amount of your wall color to white, you can come up with a version of white that will not offer too high of a contrast to your walls thus allowing everything to stay balanced, light and open.
Trick of the Trade
Another way to make a room look taller is to extend your wall coloring up onto the ceiling. If you paint a twelve inch band of wall color around the edges of the ceiling, it will elongate the walls making the room appear much taller than it actually is. To do this, paint the ceiling white and let it dry. Then mark a twelve inch border around the perimeter of the ceiling. Paint this border the wall color, and continue down the wall with the same color.
As you are furnishing your room, keep try to keep any of your main pieces from striking a contrast. Save the contrast for you accent pieces. By blending your furnishings with your wall colors, you create a visually unified space that is not broken or interrupted, and this makes the area feel open and spacious.
Author Resource:
Angela Glancy with http://www.americanartisanart.com/ has developed an interest in expanding the use of contemporary metal art and metal wall hangings.
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