Unpopular opinion – stop painting small rooms white
It's time to stop playing it safe with colour
Interior designer Natalie Jahangiry is one of Ideal Home's new Open House contributors, sharing her thoughts on decorating a home to suit a busy family life while sticking to your aesthetic values, too. See the rest of her articles here.
"I need to keep the palette light in this room because it's small and there's not much natural light." It's a phrase I hear on a regular basis, and perhaps the biggest casualty of our fear of colour is the small or dark room itself. The box room. The spare bedroom. The north facing living room. The awkward spaces you just can’t quite get right, that slowly become a dumping ground for clutter.
For decades we've been told exactly the same thing: if a room is small or dark, paint it white. Keep it light and make it disappear. But what if that's exactly the wrong approach?
One of the biggest myths in interiors is that dark colours make a room feel smaller. It's simply not true. Natural light plays a huge part in how a room feels, so a dark room will be a dark room regardless of the paint colour. In fact, deeper shades can often have the opposite effect.
Rich blues, forest greens, earthy browns and dramatic burgundies soften the boundaries of a room, making the edges feel less defined, particularly when colour drenching a space (as you'll know by now, one of my favourite decorating techniques). Rather than drawing attention to every wall and corner with brilliant white paint, darker tones create depth, atmosphere and a cocooning sense of comfort.
Think about the interiors that have stayed with you over the years. The ones you've saved, photographed or couldn't stop thinking about after visiting. They're rarely the biggest or brightest spaces. More often than not, they're rooms filled with character, warmth and personality, spaces that made you feel something the moment you walked through the door.
Somewhere along the way, we became convinced that every small room should be brightened, enlarged and stripped back. But not every room needs to feel bigger. Sometimes it simply needs to feel better, and that's where the conversation about colour becomes much more interesting.
So who took colour away?
After writing about breaking free from Millennial Grey, I realised there was another question worth asking: why have our homes become so colourless? So I started digging. Before long, I found myself deep in a late night Instagram rabbit hole (you know exactly the kind I mean!), watching creators ask exactly the same question.
One reel in particular compared the rich, colourful identities of historic brands, architecture and public spaces with the muted palettes that dominate today's market.
Another post looked at the most popular paint colours decade by decade, showing just how dramatically our decorating habits have shifted towards softer, safer neutrals.
The more I watched, the more I realised this isn't simply about decorating trends. It's about our relationship with self-expression.
Somewhere along the way, creating a home that appeals to everyone became more important than creating one that reflects the people who actually live there. We've become so focused on resale value, broad appeal and following decorating "rules" that many of us have stopped decorating for ourselves altogether.
Colour isn't just decoration
Colour stimulates the brain while evoking emotion and energy. It can make us feel calm or joyful, creative or confident. It's more than just decoration, it's personality, culture and storytelling.
Yet somewhere along the way we've convinced ourselves that neutral always means timeless, to resell a house it needs to be white and colour somehow feels risky.
Ironically, this cautious approach is most obvious in the smallest rooms. We're told to keep everything light, paint it white and avoid overwhelming the space. But when a room is tiny, every decorating decision carries more impact. Rather than trying to make a small room disappear, why not make it memorable?
As my confidence with interiors has grown, so has my willingness to embrace colour. Looking back, it's one of the best decisions I've made in our home. Every room has its own mood because every room has its own purpose.
The smaller spaces are drenched in rich, cocooning colours that feel intimate rather than cramped, while our north facing rooms are layered with warmer tones to make them feel inviting. Even our downstairs WC will be (soon!) unapologetically dark and dramatic, proving that the smallest spaces can have the biggest personality.
Instead of trying to outsmart the natural light, I've learned to embrace it, working with darker light rather than against it, and creating character where others might see a challenge. Our home feels soooo much more personal because of it.
Bring colour back
A home should first and foremost serve the people who live there. It should be filled with the colours that make you smile when you walk through the door, the shades that remind you of your travels, childhood nostalgia and your happiest memories. Those are the details that make a house feel like yours.
Thankfully, there seems to be a quiet colour rebellion underway. More homes are emerging that reject the pressure to play it safe in favour of bold, characterful interiors that reflect the people who live in them.
Homes layered with colour, pattern, collections and history. Homes that aren't designed to appeal to everyone, but to the people who come home to them every day. I hope that's one trend that's here to stay!
So paint the small room in that rich colour you've been talking yourself out of. Buy the colourful chair. Hang the oversized artwork. Choose the heavily patterned marble splashback. Cover the WC in heavily patterned wallpaper. Stop worrying about whether it's a "safe" choice and start asking yourself a much simpler question: does it make me happy?
Small rooms deserve so much more than simply being treated as spaces that need to feel bigger. They deserve drama, personality and confidence just as much as the largest room in the house.
Instead of asking how we can trick the eye into believing a room is bigger than it is, perhaps we should be asking something entirely different: how can we make it more memorable? After all, the rooms we remember aren't necessarily the biggest or the brightest, they are the ones that made us feel something for the get go.
