Before and After: An Entryway’s $25 Paint Job Makes a Maximalist Statement
If you’ve run out of walls to paint in your home, consider tilting your head upward and envisioning a pattern or bold color on the ceiling. (These 10 ornate ceilings might inspire you to do just that.) In Lisa Weaver’s (@lisaweaverhome) entryway, a bold black and white paint job totally changed the game.
“Before doing it, it just felt very bland and not quite finished,” Lisa says of this entryway, which connects many other (maximalist) rooms in her home. “I decided to paint the ceiling to add a bit more wow factor, which I think you need in an entranceway,” she adds.
The hallway itself has “a very odd shape, with an odd layout,” Lisa says. There’s a box-shaped bench right in the middle of it — in part for putting on or taking off shoes on the way in or out the door, and in part because it covers a gas and electric box which would cost too much to move.
The stripe design helps the hallway flow — and adds an Art Deco vibe.
Lisa decided to create a striped design that flows into the next room to help the whole space feel a bit more fluid. “I’d painted stripes on a ceiling in my last home and loved it, so I wanted to do it again but better!” she says. “I don’t like to do the same as everyone else or the same as what I’ve done before, so I came up with the stripes following the shape of the space.”
Because her stripe pattern was a bit complex, she says the hardest part of the project was measuring and taping out the design in full with painter’s tape (she used Frog Tape). “To make doubly sure my measurements were correct, I measured each line of tape all the way along,” she says. “I also had to account for the walls not being completely straight and adapt the line measurements in these places equally so I didn’t end up with one skinny line when I got to the middle.”
Lisa worked from the outside in, in sections. Her advice for anyone doing a similar project is to “be prepared to live with a frog taped ceiling for a long time,” she says. “Working out and marking the lines up first is the most important part that will take ages. The painting is the quick part.”
Painting only took one day.
Lisa used leftover paint (Dulux’s Pure Brilliant White, already on the ceiling, and Farrow & Ball’s Off-Black) for the project, so her only expense was $25 worth of tape. Lisa says because she was working with a cheaper base paint, she didn’t bother with creating a seal with her base color — she just touched up any lines that needed touchups afterward. Still, the most exciting part was the tape pull, she says.
If doing the project with new paint, “I would use dead flat finish black paint instead of the modern emulsion, so there’s no sheen when the light shines on it,” Lisa says. “But I had leftover paint so just used what I had.”
Despite the sheen, Lisa is thrilled with the bold new look on the ceiling. “I love how it completely elevates this space and makes it stand out,” she says, adding that the stripes bring “a touch of Art Deco” to the area. “It certainly gives it the wow factor for people who come to the house,” she says.
If you’re a maximalist, make black-white a go-to.
One of the things Lisa is most proud of in the “after” is that the bold look doesn’t overwhelm in her home, which is already quite maximalist, she describes. “Black and white goes with all colors, and so it’s the perfect ‘neutral’ to go between all my colorful rooms,” she says. “Up until now, it felt unfinished and just somewhere that leads to all the other rooms, but now it feels like a proper space in its own right!”
Inspired? Submit your own project here.