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Decorating Advice
from The Experts
Keep a Small Room from Looking Even Smaller
This is one of our most asked questions. Surprisingly the answer usually lies in the most often ignored part of the room, the ceiling. If you ask, "I have a small room with a white ceiling. Do I need very light paper or paint to keep the room from looking smaller?" The answer is YES, but there is another question you should ask..."Must I have a white ceiling?" The answer is NO.
Our eyes always perceive a dark color as being closer or advancing toward us, conversely a light color tends to recede. A light colored ceiling often makes a room look taller but that will also make the walls look closer and make that small room appear much smaller. Our eyes are also always attracted to light colors, so when you walk into a room with a white ceiling, without even noticing that you are doing it, you look up to the ceiling. Also, if you put a medium color like a gray suit type of color next to white, the gray looks dark. Put the same color next to black and it will look very light. Colors are affected by the colors that surround them.
The ceiling in my living room is a buckskin or golden brown color, darker than a brown paper bag. The walls are papered in a hopsack or gunnysack material that is lighter than the ceiling. The room truly looks 2 feet wider than when it had a white ceiling. For several months after I had painted the ceiling, I would stop people on the front porch as they were leaving and ask, "What color is the ceiling in my living room?" They had been in that room not more than a minute before and yet everyone would say either "I don't know" or "Off white". Not one person had noticed the color and yet my room appeared to be lighter and larger than it had with the "normal" ceiling white. So the question should be, "If my room is small with normal 8 foot or higher ceilings, should the walls be lighter than the ceiling?" And the answer is: "YES!"
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