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Transform your walls with these fabulous yet easy painting techniques and tips
Unique wall décor isn’t the only way to put the x-factor on the walls of your dream home. A fabulous paint job can imbue some much-needed spunk on a wall! There many great creative painting techniques to transform your home in a jiffy and infuse it with a vibe that gels with your personality and aesthetic sensibility. Create your own unique painted accent wall to mirror your character – whether its classy and sophisticated, bright and fun or muted and Zen-like.
Read on to be inspired by these simple painting techniques and DIY tips that will leave your hands itching to get rolling.
Styling With Stripes: Tips And Tricks
Stripes never go out of fashion and are both classic and elegant. Bold and contrasting stripes can lend oomph to a room while neutral muted colours can provide a quieter texture and visual appeal. Whether you go for hues from the same colour family or contrasting ones, make sure that you mark out the stripes, whether horizontal or vertical, beforehand.
Also, check out Vastu colours for your home
Sponge Painting: Creative Technique For Dynamic Walls
Sponging or sponge painting is a creative painting technique where you use a sponge paint roller or an ordinary sponge. You simply need to dab paint on the wall to create a dynamic texture. You can use similar shades or contrasting colours depending on the look you are going for. There are no mistakes when it comes to art!
Colour Washing: A Simple Interior Upgrade
Colour washing is a beautiful technique to amp up your interior walls. It gives an interesting depth to the wall by using dissimilar colours in the base coat and glaze. The colour wash painting technique can bring a soft texture and time-weathered charm to the wall and if you are a novice, it’s one of the easiest styles to try your hand at.
Rag Rolling: DIY Wall Painting Technique
In this DIY wall painting technique, a twisted or bunched up rag is rolled over a wet painted wall or pulled off at random to create a unique mottled effect. It lends a subtle texture and depth to the wall and depending on the colours used, it can create a bold or muted visual treat.
DIY Stencil Wall Art: Budget-Friendly Makeover
Now this is something just about anyone can do. Stencilling on walls is the simplest way to achieve the gorgeous look of wall paper without breaking the bank or your back! Stencil wall art will give an instant makeover to your wall or can even be used to cover up scratch marks.
Mastering Strie: Faux Painting Technique
Strie is a simple faux painting technique also known as ‘dragging’. It involves pulling a brush through a coloured glaze that has been applied over a different coloured base coat. It gives the luxurious high-end look of a linen or fabric wall covering at the reasonable cost of paint. Long vertical or horizontal strokes should be maintained to achieve this beautiful effect.
Polka Dot Wall Decor: Easy & Timeless
Polka dots are by far the easiest way to spruce up a wall even for those averse to DIY. They are timeless, whimsical and fun. You can play with size, colour and the spacing when it comes to polka dots to create a bold or sober feature wall.
DIY Geometric Wall Painting With Masking Tape
A little painters’ tape (also known as masking tape) can go a long way in creating your dream wall. From checkerboard walls to the classic harlequin (diamond) design, interlocking squares and triangles, chevrons and other geometric designs can be effortlessly created with this DIY wall painting technique.
Creating Ombre Walls: A Dreamy Fading Effect
Ombre is when one colour seamlessly melts into another giving a dreamy look. This fading effect on a wall can be produced either from top to bottom or from one side to the other. It merely requires two main shades of paint (of which one can be white).
Metallic Paint: Elevating Room Aesthetics
Using metallic paint on the walls can give a luxurious vibe to the room and there are countless ways to incorporate this. You can either opt for a whole solid metallic wall, a single panel or a layered look on the wall. Any which way, a wall with metallic hues on it will definitely be a show stopper.
Now that you have the low-down on painting techniques, here are some DIY painting tips to skip the trial and error step and paint like a pro.
1. Always Use Good Quality Paint And Brushes
Though it may seem like a waste of money, good quality paint and paint brushes/rollers are worth it. Trust us! You can even eliminate the need for a primer with a superior quality satin finish paint.
2. Buy Paint In One Go
Purchase enough paint for the entire room in one lot to avoid having different shades caused due to mixing the paint in different proportions. You can also mix all the smaller tins of paint together in a larger bucket to ensure that you get the same shade all over.
3. Cover Up
Before you start painting cover up everything you don’t want paint to splash on. Use drop cloths or old sheets on the floor and furniture and painters’ tape over the trim and switchboards. Cleaning up paint splashes can be an unnecessary and exhausting task.
4. Clean The Walls First
Paint easily chips or peels off dirty, oily surfaces so make sure you wipe down the walls you are going to paint beforehand so the paint adheres to the walls better.
5. Primer Is Important
If you have used filler on the holes and nicks in the wall, be sure to use a coat of primer or the paint job will look patchy once it dries up. The filled areas may appear to be the same colour but will look duller and blotchy.
6. Roll The Full Length Or Breath Of The Room In One Go
To avoid ugly lines of paint build up (called lap marks), roll in long lines, overlapping paint on the wet-edge. If the paint is drying too fast, make sure you feather it out on one side so that the lap marks are less obvious.
7. Roll Paint Along The Edges
Paint applied with a brush gives a different texture to that applied with a roller. Apply paint with a brush in tricky areas like around switchboards and along edges but roll over it with a small roller afterwards to maintain consistency across the wall.
8. Have A Little Patience
Make sure that the paint has dried completely before removing the painters’ tape on the trim or switchboards or you will pull the paint off with it. It’s better to cut off the tape than to pull it off to avoid any chance of a ragged edge.
Now that you have all the best painting tips and ideas to get started with, unleash your creative side and treat your walls like a blank canvas. We can’t tell you if the old adage – the walls have ears – is true or not but one thing is for sure… your walls have a personality and it’s up to you to dress them up in it!
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