What’s With Color? The Long Version Part 4: What is so important about color? It can visually change the dimensions of a room.

To visually make a room seem smaller, use intense colors, darker values, or warm colors. Intensity refers to the degree of purity or saturation of color: how dull or vivid the color is. Darker values or shades of color will decrease the room size because they will absorb more light. Red, orange, and yellow are referred to as warm advancing colors because they seem nearer than they actually are. These hues will visually help the room to appear smaller.

To visually make a room appear larger, use less intense colors, lighter values, or cool colors. By adding white, black or gray to a color will make the color less intense. Lighter values or tints will reflect light and open up the space. Blue, green, and violet are considered cool receding colors because they appear farther away than they actually are. These colors will make the room visually appear to be larger.

In the next post about color we’ll talk about how color can visually change the mood in a room.