5 Ideas For Faux Finishing Accent Walls

example of faux painting accent wall

Bolster Your Décor with Accent Walls

Feeling stifled by the boring walls in your living room? Those beige walls that silently judge you every time you perch on your couch. Wondering why one wall can’t become the perfect accent wall to flip your room from blah to beautiful?

Using faux finishes to turn one of your plain-Jane living room walls into an accent wall can help unify the overall décor of your room or stand out as a statement to residents and guests alike. Consider employing one — or, if you’re adventurous, more — of these fabulous faux philosophies to start making over your room today.

Forget Wallpaper — Try Stencils

Wallpaper can be expensive, hard to apply, even harder to remove, and sometimes seems to only come in designs your Aunt Maud would love. Instead, invest in some quality stencils that you can use to create exactly the design you want, in the color or colors you love.

That’s the best thing about stencils — their versatility. You don’t have to be locked into the same pattern turned in the same direction and only available in colors pre-chosen by someone else. Instead, you can use stencils to really experiment.

Worst-case scenario? If you don’t like the result of an experiment, paint over it with some primer and try again. But with a little planning and some elbow grease, you can use stencils to bring a neat pattern to your accent wall either as a whole or perhaps just in one area to truly create a statement.

Make It a Brick House

Both painted and raw brick walls have become very popular as accent walls, with residents of older homes removing boards to uncover original bricks and expensive remodels undertaken to install new brick walls. Either can be a very, very costly project. So instead, be a little kinder to your wallet and create a faux brick wall.
Faux brick walls can be created in several different ways. The easiest is by using thin, tile-like stickers that adhere to your wall. These are a cinch to apply and the lightest weight on your budget. However, they may not look as realistic as you desire and, if not properly applied, may peel off over time.

Taking a step up in looks and price, consider faux brick veneers. These are really thin layers of brick that attach to your wall, in much the same way a ceramic tile would be applied as a backsplash. If you take your time and use care as you create this faux accent wall, your guests may never be able to tell that your wall isn’t really brick!

Did Someone Say Shiplap?

Thanks to a certain home improvement host, shiplap is the new rage in accent walls. Finding and installing genuine shiplap may not be time- and cost-effective, however. So fake it with a faux finish accent wall! If you are truly budget-constrained but can’t stand to not have a shiplap accent wall, you can fake it with some paint.

Use white to create your “boards” and then a grayish off-white to paint in the “seams” between those boards. Then, use a texturizing brush to give your faux boards a wood-like finish.

Kicking it up a notch, you can turn inexpensive beadboard into faux shiplap. That means that with just one or a few pieces of board, you can cover your whole accent wall but have the look of having installed genuine shiplap. Just make sure you choose beadboard with generous spacing between bevels.

If your budget allows even a bit more stretching, stack very inexpensive, very thin boards on the wall and then paint (and texturize) to turn them into such a reasonable facsimile of shiplap that most of your guests will be fooled.

faux plaster accent walls

Plaster for the Win

For just about any other kind of finish you can imagine wanting on your accent wall, you can find a type of plaster adhesive that will bring your vision to fruition. Like stone finishes such as marble, quartz or sandstone?

There’s a faux finish waiting to adorn your wall. Want more of a textured wall that looks European chic? There’s a plaster for that, too, and you can learn how to use it and ably apply it using internet videos and tutorials.

How to Choose

No matter how economical or easy to apply, you still need to begin by simply considering your home and your living room décor and making a decision for an accent wall that will either tie it together or help it stand out. Spend some time browsing magazines, websites or your friends’ homes and really determine what speaks to you. Once you’ve gotten your vision, you’ll be ready to create the most amazing faux accent wall possible.

Shopping List

Below are some of the products that will help you achieve an amazing faux finish on your accent wall.

Galaxy Stone
LusterStone
Venetian Gem
RsTravertino
StucoLux Shimmer
MetalGlow
SandStone
Old World Finishing Paint
Neon Leon Tool

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