Home Building Tips - Cool Painting Effects

Fashions in decorating are always changing. Plain walls will be popular one year, patterns the next. There are many choices to make when renovating and decorating your home. Decorative paint finishes have the advantage of camouflaging defects and adding interest without a defined pattern. You'll be able to acquire special textured rollers that add a design for you, but it’s usually just as simple to use traditional supplies. Here's what to do:

Colour Washes
This treatment gives a translucent finish. Paint the walls with solvent based egg-wash and leave to dry. For the top coat mix 30% transparent oil glaze with 50% solvent-based eggshell and 20% white spirit. If you want a strong, deep colour, use it straight and for a more casual, random effect, apply with a wall brush, moving it in all directions and leaving some areas uncovered to vary the depth of colour. Repeat when dry, covering the whole wall, still using criss-cross brush strokes. You can protect the finish with a coat of polyurethane varnish in areas of wear but this will need to be removed when repainting.
Wall Sponging
An effortless method with emulsion paint, while solvent-based eggshell, which takes longer to dry, takes more time to produce an impact. For best results use related colours, sponging the deeper colour over the paler one or vice versa. (Use three colours if you want an extra elaborate effect.) Pour a little paint into a saucer and apply with a natural sea sponge in a random direction, turning the sponge from time to time, until the wall is covered. You can use rags as opposed to a sponge or even try a textured cloth like a stocking or cheese cloth for texture definition.

Ideas for Bedrooms & Bathrooms
Rag Rolling
This needs a base coat of solvent-based eggshell along with a top coat made from 20% transparent oil glaze, 20% eggshell and 10% white spire. Working from the top of the wall down, this is brushed on in vertical bands and rolled off with rags twisted into a sausage-shape.

Ideas for Living Areas
Stippling
The subtlest way of producing broken colour is to paint them all with solvent-based eggshell and, when dry, apply with a unique stippling brush a top coat made from 70% transparent oil glaze, 20% eggshell and 10% white spirit. Keep the bristles at right angles to the wall, and wipe them from time to time so they don't become clogged. You may also stipple walls by painting narrow strips of the top coat from top to bottom and then stippling with a clean, dry stippling brush. For speed, pour the top coat into a roller tray and apply with a stiff brush.