The biggest myth in home decorating just happens to be the white-makes-a-room-look-bigger rule. While it’s true that compared to an all-black room, white certainly makes a space look brighter and more spacious, that doesn’t mean you can’t use colours in a small space.

If you have a small space and you’re sick of the white walls, but don’t think you can bare floor-to-ceiling mirrors, try these tips for decorating in small spaces instead.

Bold colours: choose bold, shaper colours for your space, which help to enhance clarity and openness. Colourful plaids mixed with really hot reds, electric blues, yellows and greens, contrasted against softer colours can really help to expand a small space.

Colour accents: bring splashes of colour to accents, particularly those in unexpected places – the inside of bookshelves, the bottoms of kitchen cupboards, hand rails, and so on.

Get striped: draw the eye up the wall with colourful stripes, or paint the ceiling a lighter colour than the walls to make it seem airier.

Do go back to black: in small spaces, people are often afraid of black, but every space – large or small – should have one object that is black. The black item, whether it’s a coffee table or just a lamp, helps to ground the room and clarify the other colours.

Ease your way into colour: if you’ve never decorated with colour before, ease your way into a bold, colourful life gently: hang a colourful canvas or paint a feature wall. Then gradually up the ante by mixing colours and patterns.

Don’t forget: you can always ask your Q Paint colour consultant for help selecting the right colours for your home.