Paint it Black

Style rules are made to be broken. Especially the one that mandates that small rooms can't be painted in dark colors. I don't know how many times I've heard this, but it makes me sick to the stomach each time.

It's always been my philosophy that the smaller a room is, and more importantly, the less light it gets, the more it could benefit from a dark treatment. Dark colors provide a backdrop for objects, accents of color, light refracting crystals, and metallics. They also make small rooms feel cozier—softer—and do a nice job at concealing a lack of architectural bone structure.

So my question is this: why the obsession with trying to "open up" small spaces?!?! EMBRACE THEM! Paint them dark; a glossy black is a great place to start! Why not take advantage of the small size and turn a tiny room into an intimate, cozy and cavernous jewel box? Small spaces can be magical in a way that large ones—even with killer bone structure— can't. Most people don't have enough objects and furniture to fill large spaces that lack decent architectural structure anyway. Harsh, but sometimes the truth hurts.

This gorgeous interior is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. Small black rooms are extremely sexy:

Andrew Tauber's one bedroom Manhattan apartment, from Architectural Digest: Traditional Interiors, 1979.