With the right paint techniques and colors you can totally change the feel of a room.
Just yesterday I went on a painting job and we initially approached the job thinking we'd have to repaint all of the newly painted walls. The problem for the homeowners was that they felt their foyer was just too dark. Upon arriving and looking at the walls next to the stone tile floors it was clear that the walls actually looked much better with the floor than the suggested "fixes". So perhaps the walls weren't the problem at all.
After several discussions we realized that one of the problems was the lighting in the house, a new construction, was not quite finished and the homeowners had selected very small cans so there wasn't much light. Another problem was the weather. It is winter here and unfortunately, its one of those really gloomy periods where not much natural light was available.
The biggest problem though, and one we could fix, was the ceiling (or base color) was very dark and this made the room feel closer and darker. To remedy this situation we simply repainted the ceiling in a nice creamy color (Mautz Paint's Sandy Lane) and suddenly the gold color in the wall treatment popped and the dark base color receded into the background.
So if you're not happy with the effect your room gives off, consider changing the paint colors on the walls or even the ceiling.
