No one can be blessed with a perfectly contoured home space…but the good thing here is that the impression created by gawky extents can be rectified by deploying the correct colours. Read on to know how to create illusion with colours …
Colour can be a magical tool if you have awkwardly proportioned rooms. This often happens when houses are converted into flats. When big rooms are divided, high ceilings can make them look smaller than they are. This is where clever use of colour comes into use. If a room has unusual proportions, then colour is the cheapest way to improve it without structural alterations. Light colours reflect the most light, making rooms appear bigger and brighter, while dark colours have the opposite effect.
Tricks of the Trade to Create Illusion With Colours
A very high ceiling can be made to look a lot lower if a light colour is used on the walls. But, up to the height where the ceiling would be in proportion with the room. Then, a dark colour is used above it for the top part of the walls and the ceiling. Fix a chandelier to hang in the room below the dark top section, and the high ceiling will ‘appear to disappear’! If you prefer not to have a central light, then make a feature of the lighting. Use sculptural contemporary lights to create focal points where you choose to have them. You can also use large table lamps that shed pools of light to give a cozy atmosphere. Look out for the new rechargeable coloured balls of light – the charge lasts about four hours. Moreover, nobody will ever notice your high ceiling!
A low ceiling will look higher if the walls are painted in a dark colour. If it is papered with a ‘busy’ patterned paper up to dado rail height and then painted a very light colour above it, including the ceiling. Lighting and colour can help exaggerate the illusion of space. Harness blue’s receding quality and use subtle washes of light from uplighters to add the most height, like looking up into a pale summer sky. For a fantastic contemporary design solution, try soft washes of slowly changing coloured light on a white ceiling. It turns your low ceiling into an art feature. Specialist lighting shops have the equipment, and they are a lot less rare than they used to be.
Optical Illusions with Colours
The following mentioned below are the tricks to create illusion with colours:
- If the room is long and narrow, make it look wide. For this, you need to paint longer walls with a cool pale green or blue. Hence, the walls appear to recede. The narrower walls will appear to advance if you paint them in a deep, warm shade of red or red-brown.
- Paint corridors to harmonize with the room colour. Remove doors to create a more open-plan sense of space in a small flat.
- Make ‘small’ a virtue by painting walls and ceilings of tiny rooms in deep, warm colours for a wrap-around coziness.
- Blot out unwanted details like pipework or damaged plaster features by painting them the same colour as the surroundings.
- Add interest to a square, plain room by creating optical illusions with blocks of colour. Drop-shadows, stripes or stencilled mouldings can all be used in contemporary or traditional ways.
Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Colours
Primary Colours
- Yellow
- Red
- Blue
Secondary Colours
- Orange
- Violet
- Green
Tertiary Colours
- Lime Green
- Golden Yellow
- Burnt Orange
- Crimson
- Indigo
- Turquoise
If you want to know in detail about the basics of colour theory, we have an informative blog exclusively for you:
Interesting Pointers About Illusion With Colours
- One way to create a harmonious home is to link the colours of one room with the corridor, stairway or a feature in the next room.
- A low ceiling can be made to see higher by painting the walls in a dark colour and the ceiling in a pale colour or white.
- Paint the ceiling in a colour darker than the walls of a room. It will reduce the height of the room and provide a much more intimate atmosphere.
The tricks of the trade shared in this blog will definitely help you create a mind-blowing optical illusion. Especially, when it comes to your home space, leaving your guests tongue-tied with wonder! Do write in to share any additional pointers for the same.
We hope you loved reading our blog on the illusion of space at home. Now that you have known about the illusion with colours, we have brought up some blogs in the same niche. Here they are:
Colour Guide – Emphasising Room Aspect and the Way Colour Feels
Colour Terms Used in Home Design
Image Courtesy: Image 2, Image 3, Image 4, Image 5, Image 6
Author Bio
Huta Raval – An English Literature and Journalism Topper, Huta Raval has graduated from the L D Arts College, Ahmedabad. Post serving for 23 years in the NBFC and Public Library Sectors her desire for ‘writing the unwritten’ brought her to the creative field of content writing. Her clientele comprises of NGOs, Blogging Platforms, Newspapers, Academic Institutions, et al.