The Great House Maker
(HighFlyer - October 2001)

Interior Finishes - Walls, Floors, and Ceilings

    Hello again from the front lines.  Everyone has been busy organizing their projects, brushing up on the elements and principles of design, and lining up a decorating buddy, right?  OK, then it’s time to get physical!

    We like to start our decorating projects with the basic finishes; the floor covering, the wall finish, and of course, the all-important ceiling!

    This month, lets focus on the walls.   I’m always really happy to get a call from someone that is building a house and is thinking about the decorating before the builder asks them for the paint color.  So many of our clients live in fairly new homes where the walls are in pretty good shape and it just doesn’t make a lot of sense to paint over perfectly good, almost new walls.  But right now, color is IN!  I’m thrilled to see lovely shades of yellow, sage, and tan being used in builder’s spec homes.  It wasn’t very long ago that a builder insisted on beige walls, beige counter tops, beige floors, beige bathtubs, beige sinks, you remember that, don’t you? Now, I’ve earned my decorator stripes trying to build a room around burnt orange counter tops or rosy pink bath fixtures, so I’m with these guys on the neutrals for those rather difficult to alter items.    However, we have found that nothing brings a room to life like color and the walls are the easiest way to get lots of color into your space.  If you are one of the lucky ones whose entire house needs painted, and then this is your big chance to really make an impact on the look of your home.  If you are looking at fresh paint, albeit boring beige, then you may want to develop some strategies that work well with a neutral base.

    Paint techniques are the finish of choice right now, but we are starting to see wallpaper being used again for the first time in several years.  We use wallpaper when we want to introduce a medium or large-scale pattern into a room and don’t have the need for much furniture or draperies.  Obvious rooms that fit this criterion are bathrooms, dining rooms, mudrooms, and foyers.  Of course you can add pattern with a paint technique, but we find that the more subtle or sophisticated a technique is, the more effective.  We also like to use a wall paper border to add architectural interest to an otherwise plain room.  A fun thing to do is install a border in a different location than the standard top of the wall location.

    There are basically two types of paint techniques that you may want to play around with.  A positive technique is one where the artist (that’s you) applies the effect directly onto the base coat.  A negative technique places glaze over the base coat and then creates the effect by pulling a certain amount of the paint back off.  With paint techniques, the most important step is the GLAZE.  Please don’t try to do a technique with out glazing out your paint.  Your local paint store can help you out with the right kind of glaze for your project.  We always keep a gallon of glaze handy in our paint closet so we never run short while we are doing a project.  Be sure to buy plain, uncolored glaze, you will be adding your colors to it.  We are also enjoying the stamps and stencils that are becoming increasingly available.

    In considering your options for the wall finishes in your home, don’t forget the all-important principle of VARIETY!  As wonderful as most of these techniques are, we don’t want you to go crazy and rag roll your entire home or apartment.  We try to leave some areas with a simple, soft satiny color, use a bit of wall paper in another area and then use paint techniques in the remaining areas.  Why not consider a ragging or washing in one area, stamp a "faux" chair rail in another area, and practice a little stenciling or mural work in yet another section of the home.  We always try to avoid seeing more than two of these techniques from one vantage point in the house so we don’t overwhelm the viewer.

    Join us next month while we attack those problem floors and boring ceilings!

Denise Wilder