If you’re looking for a quick and easy way to jazz up one of your interior rooms, you should consider creating an accent wall. Not only can an accent wall enhance a room’s visual appeal and make the space more interesting, but accent walls can be used to make rooms look larger, create visual separation within a room, or highlight architectural features.

The skilled interior painters at Naples-based FCI Painting often recommend the inclusion of an accent wall when clients ask what innovative touches might enhance their interior spaces. And our clients are typically impressed by how infusing just one wall in a room with a different color, shade, material, or design element can prove transformative. Let’s take a closer look at how to approach accent wall design, with a focus on ensuring that whatever wall you accent will enhance the aesthetics of the entire room.

Accent Wall Basics

Simply put, an accent wall is one wall within a given room that has been purposely painted, wallpapered, or otherwise modified differently than the other walls to make it—or other areas of the room—stand out. An accent wall can be designed to boost the visual appeal of the entire room or make the wall a central focus point to highlight unique architectural flourishes or furnishings. Depending on the space, an accent wall can change the look of a room by adding dimension and creating fake space. An accent wall can make smaller rooms look much bigger than they are or create a sense of separation in larger rooms, such as those that serve as joint dining and living rooms.

You can accent walls with paint, wallpaper, or textured design elements such as bricks, tiles, paneling, tapestries, and unique shelving. In picking color choice, wallpaper, or textured design element, your goal is to create contrast between the accent wall and other spaces while at the same time ensuring that this contrast proves complementary. This is often a balancing act, as too much contrast can prove glaring, while too little can prove ineffective.

While accent wall color and your overall design scheme are integral elements of creating an accent wall, choosing which wall to accent is equally essential. To create accent rather than dominance, your chosen accent wall should typically not be bigger than the surrounding walls. Conversely, your chosen accent wall also should not be too small or one that furnishings will obscure. The wall behind the bed’s headboard often works well in bedrooms, as it can center and balance the room with the bed’s position. In the living room, fireplace walls work well for a similar balanced-look appearance.

Accent Wall No-Nos

Designing the perfect accent wall may seem like a relative no-brainer, but some ideas that might arise during your planning can negate the dramatic accent wall effect you are trying to create. With the idea that “more is better,” some people are tempted to accent more than one wall or accent the room’s biggest wall. Trust us, don’t succumb to such temptations. The keyword of the design element is “accent,” and if you target the most prominent wall or more than one wall, instead of creating accent, you’ll end up creating a potentially dominant feature that will likely conflict with the rest of the room.

As suggested in the previous section, color choices are crucial in accent wall design, and picking the wrong color, wallpaper, or textured design element for your accent wall can prove aesthetically disastrous. When choosing colors, ensure that they will not clash with the room’s other paintwork, primary furnishings, or other room details. Additionally, do not pick color shades that are too similar to the rest of the room’s paint; otherwise, you’ll fail to create any true accent. At a minimum, accent wall colors should be three to four shades different than the main walls, and you can opt for starkly different shades provided they mesh with the primary color and furnishings. Last, do not choose a dark color for dark spaces, as this can significantly reduce the appearance of your room’s size and cast a dark pall over that area of the room.

Consult with the Naples, FL Painting Experts at FCI Painting

Creating the perfect accent wall is an exercise designed to find the perfect complement between contrast and balance. This exercise can often prove challenging and lead to unsatisfactory results when the contrast clashes and the accent wall creates an imbalance. If you’re struggling to enhance your interior spaces with accent walls, consult with the skilled interior painters at Naples, Florida-based FCI Painters.

With more than 25 years of professional interior painting experience in southwest Florida, we have helped thousands of southwest Florida homeowners beautify their interior spaces with accent walls and other aesthetically pleasing painting adornments. For more information, contact FCI Painting online or call us at (239) 435-1001.