The Dark Room Solution

Light! More light! Usually, people who want to paint their rooms get the advice to paint them in a light, neutral color. This can work if you like neutral colors, but if your passion is for saturated dark color, you can do a lot with it on the walls of your home.

Black is the ultimate neutral. Surprisingly enough, black walls can be a great alternative to the usual whites or beiges that most people think of when they ponder a neutral wall scheme. With the right lighting and furniture accents, black walls can be dramatic and sophisticated. Care must be taken, however, to brighten the room with light furniture and decorations. Consider pairing black walls with colorful accents like red, teal, purple as well as lighter shades such as pink, baby blue and lilac for interest.

Brown is an underrated color that can bring saturated warmth into a room and serve as a backdrop to just about any color accent. A chocolate brown wall is great for showing off brighter colors while lending some color to the room scheme itself. Chocolate brown and blue combinations have recently been popular, but chocolate brown goes great with reds, yellows and greens.

Red is a color that has long been used sparingly in the wall palette, except for red brick fireplace areas.. However, a rich, dark red can lend a room sophistication and elegance that's hard to beat. Burgundy is a great color to put on walls and goes well with many colors and textures. A good dark red is matched well with black (but not too much!), white, antique browns and accents of the cooler colors.

Blues have long been a part of the wall palette in their lighter shades. However, a deep royal blue can make a wonderful wall color when paired with white, yellow and other light accents, furniture and decorations. Blue panels can also lend a significant amount of color without being garish or blinding.

Greens also are a common wall color in their brighter varieties. A forest green, though, can be understated and soothing to the eye. Paired with browns, yellows and creams, the darker greens can provide an elegant solution to your walls.

Purple is somewhat hard to use for a room, as the color walks the line between warm and cool. Some of the darker purples, such as aubergine (eggplant), can work well with a variety of colors. The richer purples, such as royal, can pose more of a challenge to match so that the purple doesn't overwhelm the room. Light greens, creams, rich red browns and yellows can provide great contrast to a purple room.

The ceiling and the floors can offer some contrast, especially if you're worried about your dark room being too dark. Light colored ceilings and floors can give the illusion of height that dark walls accentuate. Another method of contrasting is painting the walls different colors. One wall can be used as an accent wall and painted a dark/light color, depending on how dark/light you want the room to be. Two-tone walls also provide a way to use dark colors without darkening a room too much.

Don't shy away from dark colors! They may require some more thought as to accents and dark/light combinations than your average light wall color, but they can make a room striking and unusual. Coming to the dark side, in this instance, isn't all bad!

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