I once spent three weeks obsessing over a single beige. It sounds ridiculous, I know. But I had just moved into a 38 square meter apartment with a combined living and sleeping area, and I knew the wrong wall color could make it feel like a shoebox lined with oatmeal. My problem was a bed. I had no separate bedroom, so my double bed took up a third of my main room. Every time I had guests, it became a giant, unmade anchor. The solution came from an unlikely source: a velvet evening gown in a deep, dusty sage. I matched that green to a paint chip, built the entire home color palette around it, and suddenly my cramped space had bones. The trick is to pick a single, saturated hero shade, not a muddy compromise.

You cannot afford a timid home color palette when you are working with limited square footage. A wishy washy beige will just look like a mistake.