How to Decorate a High Dark Corner

Color

• Applying a light paint color -- soft white, light gray, barely beige -- to a room's interior walls and ceiling helps to brighten towering, dark corners. A satin or semigloss finish reflects more natural and artificial light than a matte or flat paint finish to create welcoming, bright corner spaces. Pastel paint colors -- yellow, green, blue -- can also help to cheer up dismal corners with a hint of color. Use crisp-white, glossy paint for a ceiling and light-colored paint in a satin finish for the walls. This paint color and finish combination adds colorful, visual interest while brightening a dark corner.

Light

• Natural and artificial light are a dark corner's best decorating friend. Removing heavy window treatments allows natural light to stream inside a room, permeating dreary corner areas. Adding tubular roof lights, ceiling skylights or transom windows -- or exchanging small windows for larger replacements -- provides ideal solutions for increasing natural light in a space. Artificial light can intensify the light level in a room to target dark areas, such as high, towering corners. For example, strategically placed, recessed ceiling lights supplies instant, bright illumination to dark corners. Installing eyeball lights or track lighting allows you to adjust and target the direction of light toward a dreary, high corner.

Accents

• Decorative accessories can add colorful energy and interesting texture to a towering, dark corner. Use accessories to complement a room's existing decorating style, color scheme and size. For example, placing a trio of tall, glossy black vases on a built-in corner shelf provides striking contrast against snowy-white walls to enhance contemporary style with a black-and-white palette. Use larger vases in great rooms with vaulted ceilings to keep them in scale with the size of a room. Baskets of greenery and colorful flower arrangements supply decorative, warm texture to a dark corner with built-in shelves. Add freestanding corner shelves for rooms without permanent structures.

Other Ideas

• Add light-colored crown molding or trim to an upper wall edge adjacent to a ceiling. This provides a bright, decorative touch around the top perimeter of a room, including dark corners. Covering a ceiling with white, wooden planks adds cottage-style, textural interest and cheery brightness to mundane, dismal ceiling corner areas. Install a built-in or freestanding corner cabinet to fill a bare corner with aesthetically pleasing, functional storage space. Decorative tin ceiling tiles add a reflective finish to help brighten dark corner spaces.