A little paint can go a long way when it comes to refreshing your home. With a few fresh coats, a room can change dramatically, going from a dreaded space to your favorite room in the house.

If your laundry room could use a facelift, a new color palette is a fast and affordable way to give the room an extreme makeover. But in a room that is notoriously small in many homes, choose the right colors can be tricky. Whether you have a tiny, dark laundry room that needs new life or a large laundry room that needs some help feeling more cozy, here are a few color palettes to try.

Navy as a Neutral

Navy blue doesn’t have to be a bold color. Instead, embrace a more muted version of the hue, like Farrow & Ball’s Stiffkey Blue. This specific paint color is wildly popular with high-end interior designers for good reason — it adds an air of elegance to any room that is understated in the tradition of the classic coastal English landscape that inspired the paint color’s moniker (which, surprisingly is pronounced stoo-key).

To fully embrace navy as a neutral, use it with a palette of light gray and white and add gold hardware accents for a classic finish. This palette will typically look best in a slightly larger laundry room. For a smaller room, use navy blue as an accent color with white and light gray as the more prominent hues to achieve a similar look without visually overwhelming a small space with too much dark color.

All White Everything

If your laundry room is small you can open the room up a bit with a clean palette of a single color: white. Paint the walls with an ultra white shade that has a high light reflective value. This can help to brighten up even the darkest, small laundry room. Not only can this help make a small room feel a bit more spacious, but it can also help to increase the light in a room with little to no natural light.

Keep the look of the room clean and consistent by having all of the cabinetry painted white as well. Finish it off with a white washer and dryer. If you are buying new appliances and are completely remodeling your laundry room, opt for a stacked washer and dryer combination in order to save space so you can add some under-counter storage and include a countertop for folding. Top it off with a hanging rod to air-dry clothes that need special care.

Keep It Natural

If an all-white laundry room is too stark for you, try a variation of it that incorporates minimal color with warm tones from nature. Limit your color palette to white, gray and black, with a mix of natural wood accents. This color palette offers timeless beauty that can look just as stylish after a decade.

Start by painting the walls white and punctuating the trim by painting it black. This includes all molding and door trim, as well as window trim. The sharp contrast of white and black creates depth and dimension in even the smallest of laundry rooms. Precision is key when painting in order to maximize the effect of this look. It can be tough to achieve the necessary clean lines. If you don’t have much experience painting, it may be worthwhile to hire a professional painter for this project. However, to avoid overpaying, do your research and avoid being cheated by a painter.

Incorporate a light-colored wood, like oak, for the cabinetry and finish it off with polished nickel hardware. The light wood tones will add warmth to the space, providing texture and more dimension. Mix in your favorite shade of gray to round out this au naturel color palette with tile flooring, a backsplash and a countertop if space allows.

Create an Accent Wall

If your laundry room is a bit more spacious, it’s helpful to create a focal point in the room to draw the eye in and make the laundry room look more put together. The easiest way to do this is to paint one accent wall a bold or dark color and then paint the rest of the walls in a lighter, more neutral shade of the same hue. For instance, if you opt to paint one wall emerald green, paint the rest of the walls in a more muted shade of light green that complements the bold emerald tone.

Choosing which wall to paint as the accent can be tricky in a laundry room. An accent wall shouldn’t be too bare, but it also should not have cluttered with too many other distracting elements, like large windows, lots of cabinetry or an eye-catching piece of artwork. Ideally, it will be a wall that only has interest under counter height, so that there’s some interest but still enough blank space to let the accent wall punctuate the room with a pop of color.

Bold Color Isn’t Just for the Walls

When it comes to making a splash and using paint to give your laundry room a total makeover, don’t limit yourself to the walls. If you have a small laundry room with built-in cabinetry and minimal wall area to paint, paint the cabinets a bold color instead. This helps you to achieve the similar effect of an accent wall.

For a fresh look, paint the cabinets a deep evergreen hue or midnight blue. You can also achieve a similarly bold look with more neutral colors like charcoal gray, light gray or a sunny and soft butter yellow hue.

Unless you’ve done it before and you are really confident in your painting abilities, this painting project is best left to the professionals. There is a ton of prep work in painting cabinetry and it can be a very time-consuming project, even for professionals. Cabinets are not as forgiving to paint as walls, but if you do decide to take on this project do plenty of research first and review expert tips for success.