Faux Paint Finishes

Apply faux paint to your walls and even your furniture. Try these different faux paint finishes.

All About

Product Ideas

When jazzing up our walls, a paint treatment is one of the smartest designs you can choose. There's a myriad of choices--from a realistic mural to faux texture--and a painted wall treatment is an enterprising way to exercise your DIY muscle.

Treatments now have gone beyond ragging and are about layering looks and capturing the emotion of color. With the explosion of designs, colors and tools available, applying a paint treatment can be one of the most personal design expressions anywhere in your home.
The new faux still has the benefits that made homeowners stand up and take notice in the past. It's a great cover for wall imperfections because your eyes are drawn to pattern, color and depth--not to the nail pops and seams on a very flat surface.
A faux painted wall will last as long as you want to keep it around. Generally, it will hold up as well (or better) as any normal paint job.
New surface designs shy away from the randomness of the past. Instead, the layers of paint and glaze are a calculated design meant to show off the handpainted texture and controlled application.

Figure A

Although it looks like wallpaper, this stripe has more negative space (seven inches) between the typical five-inch stripes. This gives it a smart look not usually found in wallpaper (figure A).

Simulate a damask stencil by mixing an acrylic glaze with a little bit of latex paint and apply it randomly over a stencil for an old-world finish.

Don't worry about making mistakes. If you do, it's only paint that can be covered over countless times.

Figure B

Murals offer people views or designs that they can enjoy all the time. If a full wall mural isn't in the plans, sometimes less is more. In place of a ceiling medallion and corner moldings, a compass and blowing wind form a scene straight from the farmer's almanac (figure B).

Try your hand at faux finishing by painting a tabletop to look like marble.

Faux Painted Table

Materials:

small table
paintbrush
acrylic paint
sandpaper
primer/sealer
marble to replicate

Steps:

1. Sand the surface until smooth and wipe off dust.

2. Apply two coats of primer/sealer, which prevents the original stain from bleeding through.

3. Study a real piece of marble before painting the design to help make the piece look realistic. Be sure to paint the edges so it looks like a slab of marble.

Tip: Look for kits that simplify the task with attractive results.