Decorating in black in any room is not suitable for the faint-hearted. But with the right guidance, dark shadows are unique to all spaces, especially the idea of ​​a black living room, which can create a fascinating and cocooning space.

"Black can be an incredibly charming and sophisticated choice for the living room," said Patrick O'Donnell, Farrow & Ball brand ambassador. "Dark things like this can create a comfortable and private space-if your room lacks natural light, this is the ideal choice because it can lead to shortcomings in appearance."

"Decoration rules can be broken, or at least manipulated," Patrick said. "Everything has to do with experiments-unless you try, how do you know if something works?".

"Don't be limited to the traditional four-sided wall-the ceiling. Your fifth wall is often overlooked in decoration. Changing the color can add a sublime dramatic effect," he suggested.

Image source: Future PLC/ Darren Chung

Create a room divider with creative living room paint ideas. Black occupies the lower half of the wall, with neutral tones on top. This monochromatic scheme helps to forge the impression of a traditional wall skirting railing, in which the architrave divides the room in two to invite artistic expression through decoration.

You don't have to have periodic properties to get this look, in fact you only need masking tape! Just glue a straight line with a straight line, then paint the two parts of the wall with contrasting colors, and use black for the lower part to fix the wider design elements in the room.

Image credit: Farrow and Bauer; hymn black on the wall

Black paint has many hidden depths, and it does not necessarily mean true black-if you are seeking the warmth of the wall. "Although the idea of ​​painting a room with black or more detailed'black' sounds scary, it can be an excellent color choice," Patrick explained.

"Think of subtle blacks, not pure blacks, because they look softer-from blue railings and black and blue to smoky Off Black and warmer Paean Black."

Rich Paean Black provides a potential purple hue, creating a comfortable and undeniable chic beauty. Consider this depth of black to update the idea of ​​a purple living room.

Image source: Future PLC/David Giles

If you are not brave enough to accept Patrick's advice on all walls and ceilings, we recommend designing only one wall for this bold shadow. A wall will still provide a very dominant color to make a statement. If you have a cast iron fire surround, it will blend seamlessly into the black background, so much the better. Or, you can paint around the fire to merge it to the black wall.

We will go one step further than this homeowner and paint the skirting board black, using this color from the floor to the ceiling.

Image source: Future PLC/ Veronica Rodriguez

In a room with plenty of natural light during the day, you can be completely immersed in a completely black room-leaving only the contrasting white of the ceiling. Paint all walls in deep saturated colors, such as black, to create an immersive experience—a cocoon-like atmosphere.

"Be brave and use color on all four walls, even the skirting line," advised Patrick. "Including woodwork will lengthen your wall height and reduce the focus on the contrast of traditional white decoration."

This atmosphere is very suitable for comfortable entertainment venues, where you want to escape to the world of boxing and movies.

Image source: Farrow and Bauer; black and blue

To prevent this eye-catching bold shadow from feeling flat, you can add a lot of ideas for the living room lightning to make sure it is well highlighted and the environment.

"Think about the time of day you will use the room-black absorbs light, so it can create a real, comfortable environment," Patrick explains. "If it is a room used during the day, you are likely to rely on artificial lighting, especially if the room lacks natural light."

Image source: Future PLC/Simon Whitmore

Use black as a bold accent color to pick architectural details such as cornices; fire enclosures and custom display and storage niches ideas. This dramatic tone will add drama to your living room plan, highlighting more refined details.

Any idea of ​​a neutral living room will benefit from this dark color combination, especially the soft gray living room that already exists in black tones.

Image Credit: Sweet Pea and Willow

"If black walls feel overwhelming, consider another decorative pattern, such as painting all woodwork black or black, and the walls are lighter," Patrick suggested. "This can feel effortlessly complicated."

As this good example of a living room shows, its gray textured wallpaper walls and black woodwork accents. The furniture echoes the strong black tones, creating a cohesive and fashionable color scheme throughout the process. Grey carpet helps keep the floor light and offsets the darker tones in the scheme.

Image source: Future PLC/Rachael Smith

Give the partition wall a strong highlight and strong shadow, such as this black feature wall. The color helps to subtly divide the area, make the walls appear, and purposefully divide the two living areas in the open space.

The strong shadow echoes through the door frame connected to the outside, helping to form a flow in the entire space.

Real black is bold. This color contains no other pigments, making it a flat, true color that works well even in small doses-if you don't feel brave enough to paint the entire wall. The real black feature wall is just something that enhances the white living room concept, such as this good example.

Adding wood tones through floors and furniture naturally adds a warm quality to this bold color.

Image source: Farrow and Bauer

Try something slightly gentler. Compared to the existing blue living room ideas, it feels darker and more charcoal, but stronger. "Our perennially popular railing outlines many boxes with its subtle blue notes," Patrick suggested. "Or for something bluer (we all like dark blue now) is our amazing archive color black and blue."

Darker tones of paint colors are great for highlighting the bold hues of flowers and fauna. Whether it is natural indoor plants or painting flowers on wallpaper and murals, welcome to use black as the perfect background to make bold accent colors really popular!

As this exquisite example shows, the bright jewel-toned velvet furniture is perfectly offset by the bold black walls.

Image Credit: Future PLC/Amanda Turner

By welcoming a wallpaper design featuring black—but not being overwhelmed by shadows, it softens the impact of black without losing its style credentials. This exquisite stripe design uses silver accents to soften the black stripes. The metallic touch in the design will help reflect light and give the wallpaper more depth.

When using a personalized wallpaper design, it is best to create a feature wall in the living room. Choose a wall that anchors the room, so it's the main wall—whether it's a wall with a sofa or a wall with a chimney and fireplace. This will depend on the layout of your living room and how you choose to arrange the furniture.

Black is a good color for the living room. It can create a charming and exquisite color scheme, which feels very popular. The deep black color on the wall creates a comfortable, environmental and private space, which is perfect for the living room-this space is dedicated to creating a sense of comfort.

If you have the idea of ​​a small living room, black is particularly good because it lacks natural light and because it has the shortcomings of phase. Make small spaces feel intentional, cocoon rather than restrictive.

You can welcome black paint to your living room scheme to make a huge impact. “If painting the walls feels too much, consider painting all wood products in black, including doors, fascias, and windows,” suggested Patrick of Farrow & Ball. "Dark wood will beautifully outline the wall, which is a delicate compromise."

You can paint all four walls for a dramatic effect, or choose to use a dominant black wall to create a feature.

The color that matches black in the living room largely depends on the look you want to create and where you want to use the color. On the walls, white, off-white, and neutral tones are most suitable for monochromatic contrast with black. Light gray also helps offset the darkness of black.

In terms of furniture, the color that matches black is best to be bright tones such as emerald green, burnt orange, and sapphire blue. For a single color scheme, choose leather furniture to add warmth, or contrast with gray or taupe upholstered sofas and armchairs.