Few wall treatments carry the same weight as a lacquered finish. There is something about the depth and luminosity of high gloss walls that simply cannot be replicated with a standard coat of paint. A flat finish sits on the surface. Lacquer pulls you in. It catches light from across the room, shifts in tone as the sun moves, and gives even the most familiar colors an almost liquid quality that transforms everything around it.

I have been drawn to lacquered rooms for years. It's a technique that spans centuries, rooted in the ancient lacquerwork traditions of East Asia and adopted by European craftsmen who recognized that a reflective surface could turn a room into something closer to jewelry than architecture. In the twentieth century, designers like Billy Baldwin made lacquer a hallmark of American high style, most famously in his brown-lacquered living room for the Eastmans in Manhattan. That room proved something important: lacquer isn't about flash. It's about presence.

Today, I find myself reaching for high gloss finishes more and more in my own work. When you're designing a room that needs to feel both polished and inviting, lacquer gives you both. And when it's paired with the right rug, the right wallpaper, and the right furnishings, the result is a space that has a real sense of occasion without feeling untouchable.

Here are eight lacquered rooms I designed, under my GreenAI Initiative, to show how this finish works across different color palettes, room types, and moods.

A Pink Lacquered Sitting Room

Pink is a color I think people underestimate when it comes to lacquer. In a matte finish, a soft blush can read as sweet or tentative. But coat it in high gloss, take it across the walls and up over the ceiling, and it becomes something much more confident. This sitting room is a good example. The lacquered millwork gives the pink a warmth and depth that shifts throughout the day as natural light moves through the windows. By evening, under lamplight, the tone deepens into something closer to rose. The cream skirted chairs and carved antique table keep the room grounded, and the herringbone floors add texture that prevents the glossy surfaces from feeling too slick. A lacquer finish like this absolutely demands smooth walls or paneled surfaces. Any imperfection shows.

A Lacquered Entry Hall With a Cloud Ceiling

The entry is the first moment your home makes an impression, and I wanted this one to feel like a complete experience. The sage green lacquered walls are paneled in a traditional layout, and the high gloss finish bounces the light from those two flanking windows deep into the hall. The cloud ceiling mural is a deliberate counterpoint. Where the walls are controlled and architectural, the ceiling is atmospheric and a little bit dreamy. The Labyrinth geometric rug anchors the stone floor and picks up the green tones of the paneling without competing with the mural above. If you're thinking about lacquering an entryway, I'd encourage it. Hallways and entries tend to be narrower spaces with limited natural light, and a reflective surface amplifies what's there. For more on choosing a rug for this kind of space, take a look at my entry hall rug ideas post.

An Aubergine Lacquered Living Room

If you've followed my work on moody interiors, you know I'm drawn to rooms with real depth of color. This aubergine lacquer is a deep plum that moves between purple and brown depending on the light, and the high gloss finish gives it a richness that a matte finish simply could not achieve. The ornate marble fireplace and fauteuil chairs bring in classical European form, while the lavender sofa and floral chintz pillows keep the room from feeling heavy. The antique rug on the floor is deliberately faded and soft in tone, which provides the kind of patina and counterweight that grounds all that intensity above. Lacquer and antique rugs are, I think, one of the great pairings in interior design. The new and the worn. The controlled and the slightly wild. Pleated lamp shades and brass floor lamps add the right kind of traditional warmth.

An Emerald Green Lacquered Foyer

If the sage entry is polished restraint, this emerald foyer is full commitment. A deep, saturated green like this is one of my favorite colors for lacquered walls because it carries so much visual weight on its own, and the gloss amplifies that intensity without tipping into heaviness. The gold convex mirror and crystal lamp add points of light that play beautifully against the reflective surface. One thing I always remind clients: in a lacquered room, less is more on the walls. Let the finish be the statement. A single mirror, a console with fresh flowers, and you're done. The natural stone floor here is key, too. It introduces enough roughness and variation to balance all that smoothness.

A Cream Lacquered Study

Not every lacquered room needs to be saturated with color. This study uses a warm cream finish across the paneled walls and ceiling, which gives the space a quiet glow that feels calm enough for long hours at the desk but still very intentional. The built-in bookshelves provide natural visual texture, and the campaign desk with brass hardware brings in a masculine, collected quality. The Color Study flatweave rug underfoot adds a Bauhaus-inspired geometry with touches of teal that echo the blue velvet chairs. In a room with this much gloss, the matte texture of a handwoven flatweave rug is an especially good pairing. It absorbs light instead of reflecting it, which creates a nice tension between floor and wall.

A Blue Lacquered Dining Room

Sky blue is not a color I see lacquered very often, and I think that's exactly why I love it here. The blue is soft enough to feel airy during the day but saturated enough that the gloss finish gives it real visual depth. Taking the color across both the walls and the ceiling in a monochromatic drench makes the room feel cohesive and almost cocooning, which is exactly what you want in a dining room. The ticking drapery and coral seat cushions add warmth without fighting for attention, and the dark pedestal table grounds the composition. A lacquered ceiling, by the way, is one of the most effective applications of this finish. Farrow & Ball's Charlotte Cosby has talked about using full gloss on ceilings specifically because it catches ambient light in ways that are quietly dramatic, especially under candlelight.

A Cream Lacquered Bedroom

Bedrooms are a space where some designers avoid lacquer because of the energy a reflective surface can bring. I see it differently. A warm, neutral lacquer in a bedroom can feel as enveloping as a good linen sheet. This room uses the same cream palette as the study, but the effect is completely different. The iron canopy bed adds structure and weight that the soft lacquered walls frame beautifully. The wide plank floors and antique bedside tables introduce warmth, and the green throw is the single point of color in the whole room. That restraint is what makes the lacquer work here. Everything is quiet, everything is tonal, and the sheen on the walls catches just enough light to give the room a gentle warmth without creating the kind of visual activity that would feel restless at night.

A Navy Lacquered Dining Room With Wallpaper Panels

This room layers two of my favorite treatments: lacquered paneling and patterned wallpaper. The deep navy lacquer on the molding, ceiling, and window frames creates a rich border around the wallpapered panels, which introduce a geometric texture that softens the room's formality. The Panthera leopard rug is doing real work here. In a room this saturated with blue, you need something at the floor level that introduces warmth and organic movement. A solid or overly geometric rug would have been too rigid. The spotted pattern breaks up the strong vertical lines of the paneling and keeps the room from feeling too composed. The Murano glass chandelier and brass cantilever dining chairs complete the layering. This is the kind of room that rewards a second and third look.

A Few Notes on the Practical Side

True lacquer involves multiple coats of specialty paint applied over meticulously smooth surfaces, sanded between each layer. It's labor-intensive and best left to a professional decorative painter. That said, there are good alternatives for getting the look without the full process. Fine Paints of Europe's Hollandlac Brilliant is the product most designers I know reach for when they want a lacquer-like result (see their ECO Brilliant for 90% lower VOC's). Phillip Jeffries also makes a vinyl lacquer wallcovering that can achieve the effect on walls that aren't perfectly smooth.

Color matters enormously. Dark, saturated shades like navy, emerald, and aubergine tend to look most dramatic because the depth of the gloss intensifies the color. But as these rooms show, softer tones like blush, sage, cream, and periwinkle can be just as striking when the sheen does the heavy lifting.

One practical consideration: paneled walls are your friend. Flat drywall is unforgiving under high gloss because every small imperfection gets amplified. Millwork and paneling create a structured surface that's both smoother and more architecturally interesting under a lacquer finish. And if you're considering paneling your walls specifically for lacquer, the result is almost always worth the investment.

If you're ready to explore a lacquered room for your home, I'd love to help. You can learn more about my full-service interior design practice, or reach out about a custom rug designed specifically for your space.