Dark Walls: Embrace your Small Space
- Siobhan Lam
- Feb 18, 2016
- 3 min read
Often when presented with small, awkward spaces in the home we turn to our old pal white paint. We lash a few coats of ‘Brilliant White’ onto the walls and meander away to nicer parts of the house and drink wine until necessity brings us back to the small, awkward room. Yes we don’t necessarily ‘like’ the tiny room or want to spend time there but here, listen – it’s done, did you not see the freshly painted walls?
So what‘s to be done!
The reality is this, no matter what colour you paint the walls of a small space, you’ll never change the actual SIZE of a room. It’s still going to be tiny. So why not distract from the size by adding interest and depth with dark shades? Darker hues like navy and black hide a multitude and look really, really cool – they add drama and sophistication to proceedings and all homes could do with a dash of that! When the Bear and I were installing our downstairs toilet, we knew that space was going to be an issue. I mean we were pretty much taking a space that use to be tiny hall and turning it into a tiny toilet but we also knew we wanted it to look awesome and so decided to wallpaper two walls and paint the rest black. Our families thought we were nuts but we did it anyway and we love it. And our guests do too, they always comment on the colour never the size but I guess they wouldn’t really comment on the size unless they were total jerks. On a side note – yay, for not having jerks for friends!
Here’s how we did it...
Step 1. Grab a beer. I jest ...or do I? (I don't).
We painted the walls with black chalkboard paint, which was more expensive for sure but we really wanted that super matt finish that chalkboard paint achieves. What made the task trickier was that our VERY white toilet and sink were already installed and so we had to duck tape the be-jaysus out of them so they weren’t utterly covered in black paint. And word of advice, if you do decide to paint your walls black DO NOT freak out after the first coat. It looks shocking after one coat - streaky and gross and reminiscent of Dirty Protests. Keep going! Trust me.
After the walls, door and ceiling were suitably black we pasted on our wallpaper - we bought some COOL ASS wallpaper from B&Q (good selection, affordable prices) and decided to stick it to the hall-facing wall, with the idea that if you're just glancing about the house and spot the toilet, you also spot a forest of birch trees. Nice right? Well we thought so.
And then it was just a matter of accessorising! The best part! We knew we wanted to introduce some metallic elements as they look so damn good next to black and so the hunt began. Second-hand stores are always good for random treasure, so I always pop into them when I'm passing JUST IN CASE. On one of these scouting trips I came across probably my best charity-shop haul ever - a slew of brass antique-style lights. Apparently an out-of-business lighting shop had just dropped them off at the shop (Oxfam,Francis St) and they were selling them off FOR NOTHING! Safe to say, we bought quite a few. We popped two of the wall lights into the bathroom, complete with filament bulbs - one sits above our framed Bill Murray print and the other sits above the sink and holds our nautical-style rope mirror. A copper planter with a cactus sits on the sink and that's pretty much it - welcome to our dark, tiny toilet! She's moody and mysterious and doesn't take shit from no-one (oh my did I just double entendre?) - let us know what you think in the comments!
TOP TIPS FOR DARK ROOMS:
Add warmth with metallic accessories and lighting (brass looks particularly good) Use bold colours in tandem - they look intensely good with black (neon pink anyone? )
Be BRAVE. Shelve your doubts and just do it - if you hate it, repaint. Simple. For more on using darker shades in the home - click here!
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