‘Pure white’, ‘absolute white’, ‘brilliant white’ — the paint industry has given endless aliases to this one shade, often becoming more lyrical as the price per gallon increases. Conventional wisdom might dictate that white paint transforms petite powder rooms and proportionally-challenged home offices into something lighter, brighter, and bigger, but here’s the truth: painting a small room white actually makes it look worse.
As interior designers embrace color trends in rooms regardless of their square footage, our decorating instincts are finally being challenged (and I'm happy about it — can you tell?) It’s not that white walls no longer make sense in a small space; it’s that avoiding color can make them look generic. I feel like painting small rooms white does them a disservice. “A space with a tight footprint is a design opportunity, not a problem to solve with a gallon of anonymous white paint,” agrees Rebekah Zaveloff from Imparfait Design Studio.
