One of my guilty pleasures is "model home-ing". I love looking at new model homes and seeing the fantastic-ly idealistic "staged" interiors. And while many model homes are geared toward a more "mass" audience, some are furnished in quite contemporary styles, and offer some inspirational ideas, (especially if you have no plans on buying!) Recently, I came across this model home that had me doing a double take. The room was done up in a slightly watered down "regency" style, tastefully done though, and featured these great trim mouldings on all the walls. But upon closer inspection, I realized they were all faux painted!
I'm not generally attracted to faux paint techniques, but I was actually quite impressed with this. Getting an even closer look, the technique looked fairly simple to do. The outline appeared to be dry brushed out to blend into the wall color. Then they added a faint white line as a highlight. I noticed they also kept one edge clean, and the other soft, which helped with the realism. This could be a great idea for someone to try, if they don't want to commit to nailing anything on the walls, or don't want to go through the trouble of measuring actual trim, having it mitered cut, and then attatched.
Has anyone ever done something like this or have any good experiences with other faux paint techniques? Please share!
faux painting is pretty much always a mistake... it generally looks tacky. my general rule is "don't fake the funk". faux painting was something i thought was rad in high school. it's rarely done well, and when it is, the sheer disingenuousness of it makes it feel like it wasn't really worth the effort.
I've seen something similar at Emeril's Delmonico Restaurant in New Orleans. So well done I was on dessert before I figured it out! There are stencils I've seen that mimic molding but I've never tried them.
I don't like faux paint - painting techniques that fool the eye. They let me down, for some reason. I do like designs painted on walls though. I just painted a black flower design on my bedroom walls and I love it. But it's not supposed to look like anything other than what it is.
My parents painted the floor of the powder room in their house. It was awesome. It was painted to look like marble.
I love faux painting, like anything else if it is done well. I really think of it as original art. I adore murals, in fact a artist friend painted a black iron, victorian faux headboard on the wall over my bed. She also painted a small, arched window, w/ what looked like the back of cat on the sill. She did that one is a formerly dark little area.Not cutesy, but cool. In her own apt, she painted faux tomatos,lined up on a real window. She is kind of goth & we have diffrent taste. But, she painted a long oval mirror. In it, a person in a black robe is looking back over their shoulder. At first glance it all looks real.
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Faux painting in most circumstances, including this one above, are just total crap. It's right up there with decal wood paneling on the side of station wagons from the 70s, plastic plants, kids in the 80s who would put one of those boomerang shaped "TV antenna" on the trunk of their car when they didn't have one, or any other thing meant to "fake it"...
...I will make one exception to faux painting techniques. Italian Renaissance painters began a style of ceiling painting where the real moldings, decorations and statuary of the walls would be painted to continue onto the ceiling using sophisticated perspective techniques that could be very convincing when viewed from the right perspective, and it can be hard to distinguish where the real wall ends and the ceiling begins when viewed from the optimum angle... and incredibly difficult from a photograph which will, of course, always be taken from the optimum angle for the optical-illusionary effect.
http://codesign.scu.edu/arth12/mantegna_ceiling.jpg
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