Yeah ok, it's not 'that' I'm looking to make bigger but property.  Jitka is into photography and she's mentioned a few times some of the tricks that estate agents use to distort the size of properties and rooms.  As someone that's about to embark on the property ladder, not to mention moving into new rented accomodation, this is all interesting stuff, not 

Anyway, the point of this blog.  Some new research has investigated how light makes rooms look larger (or smaller).  Apparently the standard belief in design circles is that if you want your rooms to appear big and spacious you make the ceiling lighter than the walls.  This contrast will make the room appear larger.  Not sure how this works with colour blind people like myself, but it is the accepted wisdom.

This research explores whether this really happens.  They conducted two experiments where people wore 3D glasses to try and judge the height of the ceiling in dozens of virtual rooms.  The rooms in this experiment were all empty, with the walls all painted grey, albeit with various shades for wall, floor and ceiling.  More importantly, all the rooms were exactly the same depth and width, but the height varied between 2.9m and 3.1m.