Easy Faux Painting Techniques

People love to create their own milieu, be it at home or at work. Home decorating is no longer an arena for professionals alone, as everyone has started to express their interest in the same. Faux painting is one such way. A very simple and inexpensive way of sprucing up a room, faux painting gives a room an instant makeover. There are different faux painting ideas that you can choose from, depending upon your style and suitability. Some easy faux painting techniques are decorative stripes painting, sponge painting, aged-leather finishing, crinkle paper painting and strie painting. All these different faux painting ideas help in creating a unique look in different rooms of your house. Be bold and experiment with a variety of interior faux painting techniques. Go through the following lines, to find the different faux painting methods.

Sponging is the simplest method available for faux painting. Take a natural sea sponge and apply paint to a wall to get a rich textured look. Apart from good looks, this method helps in covering an uneven or repaired crack in the wall. You can use a couple of other colors over the base color to add more depth and give a bold or a subtle look based on the choice of the color.

Rag rolling is used as a negative technique of faux painting, wherein a tinted glaze is painted over the base color. The color used to paint tinted glaze should be darker than the base wall color and should be from the same color family as of the base color to allow the glaze show through it. Use a crammed rag to roll out the glaze and then apply it over the base coat to get that glassy look.

Color washing is an additive technique of applying tinted glaze mixture over the base coat. As the name suggests, the glaze is applied in a circular motion, as if you are washing the wall. Use rags for a soft look or a natural sea sponge for a textured appearance.

Comb through the paint on your wall to give your room an ecstatic appeal! Combing can be in any pattern you like it to be—either from the floor to ceiling, squiggly lines or even checkered. A comb with closely placed bristles or even a squeegee with teeth cut into it can be used for this purpose. The key feature of this technique is not to break the continuity, once you start using the comb.

It is one of the most difficult and challenging faux painting techniques in which brushes, combs, sponges and even feathers are used to give a marble effect to the wall. This kind of painting can be attempted, but only after your have gained some practice about the same. This type of faux finish is suitable around a fireplace or on a floor.

If you want to give a historical and senesced look to your wall, use this particular technique of faux painting. Roll over the tinted glaze over the base coat of paint and then make fine lines from top to bottom, with the help of a wallpaper brush. The glaze should be darker than the base color for the light color to show through the fine lines.

Striping is one of the positive techniques of faux painting. The difficult part is to get the stripes straight. It is better to use a level or drop a plumb line, while using this pattern on the wall. You need to tape off your stripes and then paint every other one with glaze. However, if you are using a bold color, you do not have to use glaze to get a two color tone.

In the Venetian technique, joint compound is used. Spread a thin layer of the compound on the wall using a mud knife and then allow it to dry. If the compound is too thick, you can use water to thin it down. After the compound has dried, paint the wall with an equal mixture of paint and glaze.

This technique uses a feather to apply the top coat after the base coat. The top coat in this technique should be diverse than the base coat and depending on your choice, you can vary the quantity to be applied in varying pattern. There is no hard bound rule regarding the pattern or the way of painting. Just pick up a feather and start painting.

Frottage is one of the negative techniques of faux painting, wherein the tinted glaze is applied over the base coat using a plastic sheet. Once a coat of paint is applied using the plastic sheets, the sheets are smoothed over the glaze. Once the wall is complete, the plastic sheets are removed to get a marbling effect.