It goes without saying that the surfaces you paint in your home have a direct correlation to the perspective of how it looks. This applies to accent walls, the color of the ceiling, and soffits. The image below demonstrates this well.
The house we just completed had soffits in almost every room. I worked with the owner to decide how they would be painted to make sure the effect was what she wanted. She did not want to decrease or close in any spaces, so she chose to stretch most of them vertically by painting them the same color as the walls.
We painted the primary bathroom in Minute Mauve and the adjacent bathroom in Silverpointe. Even though the bottom of the soffits were painted with the same color as the walls, the light plays a nice trick on the eyes and they look lighter.
Fortunately, the room on the left did not have any soffits, but the other 2 did. Painting the entire box with the same color as the walls reduced their presence in the space.
The colors from left to right are Meander Blue, Sea Salt, and Lullaby.
The owner chose all of the hallways and the 1st floor to be Repose Gray, which is a very nice and common neutral color. Because of the structure of the 1st floor soffit, she had difficulty choosing what to do with it. We almost painted the vertical face of the long soffit in the kitchen and living room with the wall color, but she ultimately chose to leave it as the ceiling white. If we painted the bottom the same as the wall, it would have closed in the space. So, she chose to stretch the kitchen vertically with that unfortunate box above the windows.
