One of the easiest do-it-yourself projects that can drastically and dramatically change the look and feel of a room is painting or repainting a room. Painting a room can change the color, the accent and the tone of a room, and can even change the room’s appearance of size, brightness or dimness level of the room.
If you’re thinking about painting a room in your house, there are several things to take into consideration. Let’s look at a few of those things as well as a few how-to options for painting a room.
Paint an Accent Wall When you Paint a Room
Accent walls are quite popular, because painting an accent wall can add a colorful flare to an otherwise ordinary room, and help compliment the color and tone of furniture or other furnishings in the room without overwhelming the walls with color. To paint an accent wall in a room, simply pick one wall with the most wall space where someone entering the room would be most likely to focus their attention, and paint that wall a contrasting accent color.
Accent walls are usually bold or bright colors while the rest of the walls are lightly or lighter colored. The accent wall can also be contrasted with the trim pain color of the room. The accent color for the accent wall when painting a room can be a color the matches your furnishings or a complementary color to your furnishings. Keep in mind also, the accent wall color can be changed without repainting the entire room in your house.
Paint the Trim a Different Color When you Paint a Room
Most painters will choose a slightly darker trim color for door frames, window frames, crown molding or baseboards. In fact, professional painters often use a different type of paint for the trim, such as a gloss or a satin while the walls are a latex flat. This makes the trim stand out and accents the room.
If you want to make paint a room like a professional, consider using a brightly colored accent color paint for the trim with a high gloss or a satin finish. If you use an accent wall when you paint a room, the trim can match the color of your accent wall, but will be a shinier, brighter finish. The trim most people neglect or overlook when painting a room includes the baseboard trim and the crown molding or the ceiling trim in the room. You’d be amazed how professional properly painting the trim in a room can make the room look.
Use Special Texturing When Painting a Room
Your walls don’t have to be flat colored walls. You can spackle, texture, sponge or drag your walls to give them texture before adding color. Check at your local hardware store and ask someone in the paint department for techniques and kits to texture your walls before you paint a room in your home. In fact, there are special tools, kits and videos you can purchase for reasonable prices to learn how to add texture and designs to your walls when you paint a room.
Taping Walls to Paint a Room
If you’d like to do each wall a different, contrasting but complementary colors, all you have to do is tape the edges of the wall and use a special edge painter tool. This will help you keep the lines straight on the edge and not paint over the other color on the adjoining wall. However, what we’re talking about here is taping the wall itself to create stripes on a single wall! This is a fantastically easy way to make painted stripes on your walls.
First, select the area you want striped, and use paint tape to mark off the right width for the stripe–from narrow to wide stripes, it’s your choice–and then once the tape is secure, paint the entire wall with your base color. Let the paint dry completely. Remove the tape and then tape over the edge of the area you had previously painted. Now, you can paint inside your tape lines for a clean, straight painted stripe on your wall.
Split the Wall Top and Bottom When Painting a Room
If you’d like to paint the top half of your wall one color, and the bottom half another, you can get some inexpensive unfinished crown molding without a flat edge, and nail it to the mid-section of your wall. Simply paint the top part above the molding strip one color, and then paint the part below a different and contrasting color (usually a darker color). The molding strip can match the bottom color or it can be a third and completely different color for a nice textured splash of a divider color.
These five ideas are just simple ideas to get you started on thinking of creative ways you can paint a room in your home. If you want more ideas, visit your local hardware store and check out the literature, videos and staff suggestions for creative ideas when painting a room in your home.
