Welcome to part two of our installment on painting rooms based on orientation! We did east last time, so it’s only right that part two focuses on the opposite.
West-facing rooms are at the end of the line when it comes to getting sunlight, which means your mornings in west-facing spaces are going to be shadowy by comparison. As with east-facing rooms, the high noon (point where the sun is at its peak) moments are when colours wash out a little.
But the main focal point for your west-facers starts just past high noon, and continues until the sun goes down. Quite suddenly, the room will start filling with the warmth of an afternoon. Golden rays will flood through, and intensify as the afternoon wears on. Whether the sunset is of the spectacular pink variety or not, the warmth provided will have demands of your paint colour choices to create a perfect ambiance.
And just like last time, let’s divide our focus between room usage: if you’re there a lot in the morning, vibrant warmth is a great option! This compensates for the shadows of the morning, and while it could be a little garish in the afternoon, for morning’s purposes, it’s just enough to put a pep in your step to start the day.
If the room gets a good deal of use in the afternoon, the options open a little more! If you love the warmth and have no aversion to a warm room (some people do!), you can take on the sort of rich colour that will be amplified by the setting sun, like a deep red or even a yellow. If you’d rather pull it back a little, neutral colours with a hint of a cool green work well to offset the golds coming through the window, but artificial lighting in this environment isn’t always a crowd favourite.
In the above photo, an offset green tone pairs with the afternoon light and the cooler decor to create a pleasantly warm ambiance. In the photo below, the walls (a very gentle peach with white overtones) get a little washed out by the natural lighting, but they also have a good bit of pop to them from the sun streaming in; if you enlarge the photo and look at the dining room, just beyond this sitting area, you’ll notice the difference between warm and cool light in this image. It’s really something!
So remember: the next time you’re interested in painting up a west-facing room, how warm do you want the space to be? The possibilities are there – you need only reach out and grasp them!
