High Contrast: A Design Trick That Makes Small Spaces Seem Larger

This is the conventional wisdom: for a small space, light colors. Dark colors can make a space feel heavy and oppressive, and they tend to soak up light, which is usually at a premium in a smaller space. But one of our house tour homeowners, who lived in a very small space indeed, alerted me to a neat trick. Dark colors can actually make a small space seem larger--it just all depends on how you use them.