Name: Alistair Green TH27, Sergeant VM103
Brand: Ralph Lauren
Strié (French for “dragging” or “streaking”) is a painting technique used to give a wall the appearance of fabric, like raw silk. Every time I’ve used this technique it’s been with Easter-egg pastels. But for my friends with the Brooklyn brownstone, we decided to try something more adventurous.
At first, we tried a black strié over charcoal grey to get the effect of black silk wallpaper. We tested several color combinations and the results were too leaden and lacked pizzazz. At a certain point when things aren’t working out, I have to step back and ask myself what the room wants, and this room definitely didn’t want to be black. We then began pulling colors out of the knotty pine floor, which had been stained dark green.
Several color combinations were attempted before finally alighting upon this: Ralph Lauren Alistair Green TH27 over Sergeant VM103. Alistair Green is dark and cool, and vibrates pleasantly against the warmer and lighter Sergeant. The resulting effect feels a little bit like a Wisconsin cabin from the 1940s, a bit Gothic, a bit super-sophisticated and completely idiosyncratic. I’m told that as TV rooms go, this is exceedingly cozy.
My dear friend Laura chose a non-traditional route in painting their home. Quoth she: “ I wanted to paint an entire brownstone without using pale yellow once.” I think we succeeded.
- Mark Chamberlain, interior and decorative painter
© 2009 Apartment Therapy
Dramatically beautiful! Can you post any how-to suggestions, or give a fuller description of the technique? I'm imagining a fine comb across the second paint color, but no doubt it's more complicated.
If you click on Mark Chamberlain's name, there is a lovely blue in the second photo. Anyone have any idea of what shade of blue this is?
Julien - BM Knoxville gray
Ok. I need to see a full house tour of this place. NOW. All of the pictures from it have been jaw-dropping gorgeous, but these single pictures are such a tease!!!
Needless to say that wall looks fabulous.
Very nice! I've experimented with strie recently with the combination of a background deep red and strie coat of a metallic bronze. It turned out great and I want to try more. I used a rough scrubbrush held at an angle, pulled quickly through the glaze. This was under a chairrail and the upper part of the wall is the background red. The effect was more brushed bronze than linen.
Choosing the color combination is really the trickiest part. I'd love to know some more combinations, any suggestions?
Wow -- a Hummel never looked so good!
Farrow and Ball makes a fabulous striee wall paper.
In answer to Robin, you should google 'strie' without any accent and a whole bunch of tips come up. It is also called 'combing' with wider 'teeth' cut from cardboard, and dragging.
However I will add I've got a Conran book of paint techniques and it says
- flat basecoat so the streaks shine.
- to paint the glaze in 24 inch or 60 cm vertical strips
- when dragging, stop 6 inches or 15 cm from the leading wet edge, so the next 60 cm of glaze overlaps without lines.
- it's better if 2 people do this, one doing the glaze and the other dragging
- if you let the first batch of dragging dry thoroughly & the glazing compound ***slows drying*** not thins the paint - and then repeat the drags horizontally, you get a fabric effect. As dragging along a whole wall would be ifficult, maybe panels would be do-able.
- you can do this entire job using water based acrylic paint because there are now 'paint slowers' for acrylic paint. Flood makes one.
robin--there's so much info on the technique available i chose to omit that to save space. you're basically applying a base coat in an aquapearl finish, applying a top coat mixed with glaze and scraping it off with a special brush. my only secret is that you need to add a lot of extender, or glaze will dry up on you and start to pull if so much as take time to scratch you eyebrow.
julien-- i wrote an entire article confessing how that picture had been heavily photoshopped, and some suggestions for underwater blues. see color therapy, knoxville grey.
Wow, I think this is really gorgeous. First example of strie I've seen and liked. (Maybe the others just weren't good examples.)