How To: Faux Finishes

This how to: faux finishes guide will give you the info you need to create your own personalized faux finished designs at home. These finishes can inject style and pizzazz into your home décor, no matter what your design style preferences are and by doing them yourself, you can get the exact look you want while saving a fortune on hiring expensive professionals.

If you’re new to interior design, you might be scratching your head right now, wondering what exactly a faux finish is. In a nutshell, a faux finish is a technique that creates the appearance of a certain design or material on a surface. Faux finishing is most often done on walls as part of painting to create the look of wallpaper, marble, antique finishes or some other design, but it can also be used on furniture like bookcases, tables and more.

Faux finishes can be used to add style to a room, to give the room depth or texture or to use “tricks of the eye” to make a room appear larger or smaller.

There are many different kinds of faux finishes, but some of the most popular ones include:

• Marbling
• Antiquing
• Stenciling
• Sponging
• Wood graining

The first step in starting your faux finishing process is to make sure your surface is properly prepared. The preparation process is the same one you would use if you were just planning on a standard paint job:

• Clean the surface thoroughly, using either soapy water or a cleaning agent that is appropriate for the surface material. Giving it a once over with a bleach/bleach alternative solution is a good idea as well, as this will get rid of any mold or mildew that may be brewing. Obviously, you should test a small area of the surface before using any of these agents to make sure no damage is done and always make sure the cleaning materials you use are intended for the kind of surface you are cleaning.

• Make sure the surface is as flat and smooth as possible. This may require you to scrape off old paint, fill in holes with caulk and/or sand the surface. Time consuming and tedious though this project may be, it will make all the difference in the world to your finished product.

Now, it’s time gather your materials. You’ll need:

• Primer
• Glaze
• Different paints (your bottom coat, your top coat, your accent colors and so on – the choices you make here will be specific to your color scheme, the surface you're painting, and the faux finishing technique you are using. Remember that latex paint is cheaper, but oil based paint allows for more color mixing and is more forgiving to mistakes because it takes longer to dry.)
• Paint brushes/rollers
• Paint tray/water bucket
• Sponges, stencils, sanding paper or anything else you plan on using to create your specific faux finish

When you’ve gotten the prep steps out of the way, it’s time for the fun part – the actual creation of your look. Give these projects a try:

Sponging simply involves dipping a sponge in some paint and using that sponge to create a pattern of your choosing. It can be completely abstract or it can stick to a set rhythm. This is one of the easiest faux finishes to create and is really great if your walls or your furniture has seen better days:

• Paint a background color on your surface – allow to dry.
• Dip your sponge in water, squeeze out the excess, then dip into another color paint
• Tap excess paint out by pressing the sponge on a newspaper – this will also give you more even coverage.
• Divide your wall into sections and sponge each section until you achieve your desired look.

When sponging, it is best to choose colors that compliment each other or are in the same shade family – going for contrasting colors will be overwhelming.

Glazing can be as easy or as complicated as you want to make it – it’s a forgiving finish style that hides imperfections on your surface and creates depth:

• Paint your surface in your base color
• Divide the surface up into sections and paint each section with your glaze
• Once the glaze is up, use a brush that is at least 3 inches in diameter and paint little “x” marks in the glaze.
• The “x” marks will create dots that allow the base coat to shine through the glaze.

You can create more elaborate patterns with your brush to suit your tastes.

For more faux finishing projects, check out Extreme How To.

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