How to Make a Small Bedroom Look Bigger with Paint!

Victoria Ford of PrepFord Wife calls herself a “modern Stepford wife,” and it’s an apropos title: she’s stylish, charming, and an absolute pro at making a house feel like a home. Victoria is also a particularly brave woman when it comes to design, and the previous iteration of her main bedroom proved it. With quirky walls featuring everything from stenciled hydrangeas to a trio of straw hats, the space embodied Victoria’s signature aesthetic. “I always describe my style as classic with a wink,” Victoria tells us. “It's a lot of traditional color palettes, styles and shapes, but then there’s always a pleasant little design surprise thrown in.”

How To Make a Small Room Look Bigger With Paint

Eventually, Victoria and her husband found that the bold walls were challenging their ability to relax and recharge in what should have been their sanctuary. “We've always had a print and the prints were always busy,” Victoria says. “It subconsciously made it harder to decompress from the day.”

How To Make A Small Room Look Larger With Paint

The Challenge: A Small and Busy Bedroom

The prints also took up a lot of visual and mental space, which translated to a room that wasn’t living up to its 200-square-foot potential. Bold patterns can add coziness to a small space if that’s the goal, but they can’t create the restful ambience that Victoria had in mind. She also wanted to make her small bedroom look bigger.

It was time for a change. Victoria’s vision: a main bedroom that felt classic, soothing, and a bit like bringing the outdoors in. With those qualifications in mind, Victoria visited the Clare Color Genius and selected seven swatches to experience at home.

“When the samples arrived, we tacked them all to the room and rotated them for about a week to figure out which looked best in the light, which we would actually want to fall asleep with on the walls everyday and which one would pair well with the other colors we considered for the room,” Victoria says. “We narrowed it down to two colors and Views was the one that we kept coming back to time and time again.”

Making A Small Room Look Larger With Paint

Creating the Illusion of Extra Space

After a quick and easy paint job, the stenciled flowers were nowhere to be found — and Victoria had also re-coated the trim with Snow Day and the ceiling with Fresh Kicks. Instantly, the room was transformed — and felt so much bigger.

“The color does a great job of unifying the walls with furniture,” Victoria notes. “When you look at the bed, the straight lines against the wall color draw your eye up and make the room feel taller.”

We love the way the tranquil blue — with just a touch of green — balances perfectly against the warm rattan headboard. And compared to the high contrast and bold styling of the previous walls, Views is about as peaceful as it gets.

"The color now is soothing and instantly leads to relaxation,” Victoria says.

The Fresh Final Touch

But while Victoria loves the updated walls and trim, she believes the 15-minute ceiling refresh was the key to the new look. (Yes, you read that correctly: she rolled the whole surface in just 15 minutes!)

“The ceiling actually made the biggest difference,” Victoria tells us. “It feels very fresh and clean and new. Fresh Kicks is a bright white that just continues the lines of the room and you're not subconsciously distracted by what's going on with the ceiling.”

Victoria’s main bedroom faces south, so she gets bright, crisp light, resulting in exactly the vibe she was going for: “refreshing and beachy” during the day, and “relaxing and moody” at night.

And have you spotted any of the design surprises? Here’s a hint: These paint colors were meant to bee.