Picture Perfect: 30 Successful Small Living Areas

If it were only that simple Rebecca. It's more accurate to say that cool colours recede and warm colours advance.

Here's the rub though - Each and every colour, or hue, has warm tones or cool and this affects how we perceive the space in which they're used. This applies to small rooms or large as well as individual items and even the seasons, or at least the quality of light in the atmosphere at a given time of year (or time of day for that matter).

If you study an artwork - a painting of a landscape say - that has a lot of depth, it might be logical to assume the depth is represented by large trees and rocks in the foreground and smaller trees and so on in the background. Take a bit longer to look though and focus on the green paints (for example) that have been used - you will soon notice that the greens in the foreground will have warmer tones than those greens in the background. You'll soon begin to see the same feature in the other colours used - reds, blues, yellows, even the browns, greys and yes, the whites. There are both warm and cool undertones in each basic colour

The same principal applies to the paint on your walls and explains the huge variety of colour choices in your local paint store. It's also why we should use sample pots when choosing wall colours, sampling them on more than one wall to get a true feel of how the light in the room alters the way we feel about our choices.

Truth is, we're not entirely just choosing colours, we're choosing an effect of coolness or warmth. Choose to paint your walls in a mid green that has cool undertones and the room will appear more open than if the undertones in your mid green are warm.

I wonder if any of these are rentals!

I enjoyed looking at your article on small rooms and I am really quite impressed with the article and I am going to try and implement some of the ideas into my own small unit thanks again for all the great ideas that you put on your site Debra Weeden