More than paint: How colour changes the way a room feels

Walk from one room into another and the mood can change almost immediately.

The bedroom might feel quiet and soft. The living room, only a few steps away, feels warmer and more social. Then there is the kitchen, brighter, busier and perhaps a little more playful.

Part of this comes from how we use these rooms. But sometimes, the difference begins simply  with colour.

People often choose colours based on how they look to their eyes. A particular green catches our eye on Pinterest, or a warm beige seems like a safe choice for the living room. But once that colour covers a wall, sits behind a sofa or appears repeatedly across a room, it begins doing more than decorating it.

It starts setting the mood.

"Colour has a strong effect on the mood or feel of an interior space," said Tasnim Turji, founder architect of Srishty Architecture and Consultancy.

"And because every room asks something slightly different from us, the colour that feels right in one may not have quite the same effect in another," she added.

A mood behind every colour

Imagine the difference between walking into a pale blue room and one wrapped in deep burgundy.

The furniture could be similar. The room could even be the same size. Yet the feeling would be completely different.

According to Turji, blues and greens can give a room a calm, relaxing feel. White, beige and grey can create a more peaceful atmosphere. Move towards yellow and orange, and the room begins to feel warmer, more vibrant and energetic.

Darker shades change the mood again. Rich burgundy, deep navy blue and magenta can make a room feel more intimate, intense and dramatic.

This is where colour becomes particularly interesting. There is no single mood that every home needs to have.

A bedroom might need to settle you at the end of the day. A dining room can afford to feel warmer and livelier. A living room may need to sit somewhere in between, comfortable enough for an ordinary evening on the sofa, but welcoming enough when guests arrive.

Choosing a colour, then, can begin with a different question: what should this room feel like?

A different palette for every room

The answer naturally changes as we move through the home.

For bedrooms, Turji suggests softer, soothing shades such as light blue, green, beige, lavender and olive. None of these colours demands too much attention, which helps create the calmer environment we tend to want from the room where we rest.

The living room has a different job.

It is often the most shared space in the home, somewhere to sit after work, talk over tea, watch television or welcome people in. Here, Turji points towards neutral palettes of grey and white, mixed with copper, bronze and coffee tones.

Earthy colours work particularly well because they bring warmth without necessarily making the room feel busy.

In many Dhaka apartments, where the living and dining areas also sit beside each other, these quieter shades can form a useful base. One space does not need to suddenly end in one colour for another to begin. The palette can move gradually through furniture, fabrics and smaller details.

The kitchen, meanwhile, can handle more contrast.

Turji prefers combinations of lighter and deeper shades, with upper cabinets in colours such as white, cream or light grey. Keeping some of the larger surfaces light can prevent a compact kitchen from feeling visually heavy, while deeper colours elsewhere can give it definition.

These are not rules that require every bedroom to become blue or every living room beige. The design theme and aesthetic of the individual space still matter.

Instead, it is about allowing the colour scheme to follow the way the room is actually lived in.

Colours that open up a small space

Colour can also change something that seems much harder to change: the size of a room.

Not literally, of course.

But in a compact apartment, the difference between a room that feels closed-in and one that feels open can matter almost as much as a few additional square feet.

White, cream and pastel shades reflect more light. As more light moves around the room, its edges can feel less imposing and the space can appear brighter, wider and more open.

Darker colours absorb more light, which can have the opposite effect.

For Dhaka homes, this becomes particularly useful.

"If we look at apartments in Dhaka today, the spaces are often quite small and the individual rooms are also small," Turji said. "That is why we usually try to keep the main colour white."

A white or similarly light base can help these smaller rooms feel more spread out.

But smaller is not always worse. There are corners of a home that we actually want to feel enclosed, perhaps a reading corner, a television room or simply a bedroom where the intention is to create something more intimate.

In those spaces, the same deep colours that might make a room appear smaller can become exactly what makes it feel cosy.

The trick is knowing which feeling you are trying to create.

Adding colour without repainting

Not every colourful room needs a colourful wall.

In fact, some of the easiest ways to experiment with colour begin with the things already sitting in front of it.

Turji gives the example of a light grey wall with a yellow-toned couch. The wall remains quiet, while the sofa becomes the part of the room that catches the eye.

From there, colour can appear in smaller doses.

A terracotta vase can sit beside a green plant. Deep grey and slightly orange cushions can be placed on the yellow sofa. Suddenly, a room built around a neutral wall has several colours working together without feeling as though every surface is competing.

Curtains can have a similar effect.

A completely white room can take on a different character with deep blue or green curtains. An emerald green wall, meanwhile, could be balanced with lighter coffee or mousse shades through a rug or an abstract artwork with terracotta tones.

These combinations also make colour considerably easier to live with.

Painting an entire room is a commitment. Moving the furniture, preparing the walls and repainting everything is not something most people want to do every time they become tired of a colour.

Changing two cushions is another matter.

Rugs, curtains, carpets, artwork, lamps and decorative pieces allow a room's palette to shift without starting again from scratch.
 

Getting the balance right

The temptation with colour is often to think first about which shade to use and only later about how much of it the room can take.

That order can cause problems.

A deep green that looks beautiful on a small paint swatch can feel completely different once it covers four walls. Similarly, a bright colour intended to become an accent can lose its effect when it appears everywhere.

Turji points to not planning how much of a wall or space a particular colour will cover as one of the mistakes homeowners can make.

The colour itself may not be wrong. The proportion might be.

Sometimes the answer is an entire wall. Sometimes it is one sofa, a curtain or the smallest terracotta vase sitting in the corner.

That is perhaps what makes colour one of the easiest ways to change a home and one of the easiest to get carried away with.

A room does not need every colour we love.

It needs the ones that make sense for the way we want to live in it.

And when those colours are chosen well, we may not immediately notice the beige on the wall, the blue of the curtains or the green tucked into a cushion.

We simply notice that the room feels right.