The best paint colours for making small rooms look bigger

Small rooms can suddenly look and feel even smaller with the wrong paint colour choice. But that doesn’t mean you have to go with white – there are plenty of other options that work just as well for making the space look bigger, and the wrong white could give you the very feeling you’re trying to avoid.

“The biggest mistake [people make when choosing paint colour for a small room]  is assuming every small room should be painted bright white. White can absolutely work, but if it’s the wrong undertone for the natural light, it can leave a room feeling cold and flat rather than open,” Cayley Scrooby, interior stylist from Sovereign Interiors told nine.com.au.

Light colours in general are the best option for making a small room feel bigger, according to painter Glen Hare.

“You can pick a really nice light blue that can make your room look bigger, or you might like pinks; don’t go picking your bright pink – you can pick a nice light pink, and that still makes your room look bigger, as long as you do your white ceilings as well,” he said.

Paint colours to avoid are darker hues, with Scrooby naming “deep charcoal, black, navy and heavily saturated colours” as ones to avoid because they make rooms feel closed in.

“These colours absorb light rather than reflecting it, which can make the boundaries of the room feel more defined,” she said.

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"That's not to say darker colours should be avoided altogether. In the right setting they can feel incredibly sophisticated, but they work best when they're balanced with good lighting, natural materials and enough visual breathing room."

Both experts warned against feature walls; however, Hare revealed there are ways to have that kind of look without impacting how spacious the room feels.

“People go with that dark feature wall, and that can make your room come in to make it feel smaller. So another good way of making your room look that little bit bigger if you want a darker colour is to paint your ceiling in that colour as well. So, your ceiling and one wall, and put your rest of the three other walls in a light colour,” he said.

“I know it sounds weird, but if you’re going to go out there, and you’re going to put that feature wall in, and you want that impact that’s a good one.”

Hare also likes to add colour to a room by painting two corners for a little pop without doing an entire feature wall.

“Say you want to do like a nursery, and you want to do a blue or a pink, but you don’t want to do a whole feature wall. Go to the corner of a wall and bring out 500 to 600mm each way on two walls, and just paint that corner in a blue or a pink or purple or yellow, and that there is enough colour in your nursery or your bedroom to add that pop. That’s pretty on trend at the moment. I love doing it in people’s homes, I talk them into it, and they love it,” he said.

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If you’re having trouble deciding what light paint colour to choose, Scrooby recommended taking cues from what else is in – or going in – the space.

“The colour palette should always be chosen alongside the finishes, lighting and furniture. It's the relationship between those elements that determines how a room feels, not the paint colour on its own,” she said.

“I generally encourage people to think in terms of tone rather than colour. When your walls, larger furniture and key finishes all sit within a similar tonal family, your eye moves through the space much more easily, making the room feel larger than it is."