Interior Painting & Decorating: Do’s and Don’ts for Small Rooms

Living in a big city comes with perks such as access to mega shopping centers, cool music and entertainment sports, and great nightlife. However, the downside is that you pay huge rents for spaces that are smaller than ideal. If you’re planning to repaint or redecorate a small room, how you choose to go about it can make it look spacious and open it up, or make it smaller and uncomfortable.

Strategic decorating and wall painting is one of the easiest ways to open up seemingly small rooms without significant investment and effort. Whether you’re planning to open up your small bedroom in the city or a smaller spare guest room at your home in the countryside, here are some painting and redecorating dos and don’ts:

Dos and Don’ts
Dos
• DO Use Light Colors: it’s a generally known fact that using light colors can make small spaces look bigger. Bright walls and lights make a space feel a little more airy and open, and this helps enhance the presence of natural light.

On the contrary, dark colors tend to absorb light, making small spaces look even smaller. If you’re repainting your walls, choose soft tones of off-white, green and blue.

• DO Play With The Lighting: if possible, allow more natural light to come in as this will open up your room and make it seem bigger. However, if you don’t have enough natural light, you can introduce some artificial lighting using creative lighting fixtures. If it’s not a bedroom, you can use harsh or overly yellow lights to open your small space.
• DO Use Mirrors: this is another great way to create an illusion of a bigger space. You can create the illusion of depth by pointing angled mirrors towards your focal point. The mirrors also reflect light and make a room seem larger
• DO Create an Accent Wall: You’ve probably heard about accent walls already, they create as focal points where eyes naturally rest in your small space. They can also be used to highlight other décor items. But most importantly, in this context, painting one wall in a stronger color than the others creates an optical illusion that there’s actually more space in the room. Just be sure to keep the other walls in a neutral color, otherwise, your space might seem too busy.

Don’ts
• DON’T overuse Patterns: Choose plain light colors for your walls, or one bold color for your focal point and add in quitter complementary neutrals. This way, your room will not feel crowded.

• DON’T Use Small Window Treatments: window treatments such as drapes fitted exactly to the window often make the room seem smaller and more congested. Large treatments usually make a room look bigger. While at it, don’t overdress the window because the room might look crowded.
• DON’T Clutter: keeping your small room cluttered will automatically make it feel cramped and congested. A cluttered room equals a smaller room. Also, you shouldn’t cover your walls with too much décor or pictures, instead, you can use one large painting.

If you need any help with your interior painting project in San Diego, Peek Brothers Painting can help. Simply book a free estimate appointment or give us a call (858) 505-1361 to get started.