Designer takes a look back at paint-finish trends
For more than 20 years, I have been happily ensconced in the busy life of making television shows and writing about decorating and design.
One of my favorite roles has been as a syndicated columnist, writing the House to Home columns weekly, along with my longtime writing partner Barb Dingle. These columns are syndicated, which means they are picked up by papers across Canada through TorStar and through King Features in the U.S. After 17 years in print, my column has just been renewed for another three years. This is a huge honor, especially given the struggling state of newspapers in this digital age. I have you, my readers, to thank for continuing to send in questions and welcome comments.
It is an important milestone, one that encouraged me to look back at all the trends, decorating tips and projects that we have covered.
My journey began in the late 1990s, when decorating shows were in their infancy. In fact, my first television series, The Painted House, was a pioneer in this type of programming. I discovered that viewers were passionate about their homes and wanted to take a major part in fixing them up. My decorating tool was paint.
DIY became a familiar acronym for do-it-yourself, and there was an explosion of products and projects that homeowners championed.
My newspaper columns began shortly after. Today, as has always been the case, central to the columns are all the questions sent in by you, the readers. Your household challenges have guided and continue to shape our editorial path.
For the next few weeks, I will be looking at the challenges that were most frequently posed in the past and at what has changed over the years. Significant technological and historical events offer new and easier solutions to your questions.
Let’s begin with how I began — with a bit of paint, some common household tools and lots of imagination.
The advent of water-based paints, glazes and varnishes, which are continually being perfected, took paint effects that were the purview of fine artists who guarded their secret recipes and made them not only possible but easy for anyone to master.
Creating texture on walls with paint started a revolution; looking back on it may give you shivers.
We’d just take a kitchen sponge and dip it into paint. If we layered different colors on the wall, we’d have an interesting contrast in shades and depth. This simple effect is a bit naive and leaves the wall surface bumpy. But it has a more sophisticated look when combined with a technique such as stone blocking.
Shown in the left-hand, shades of gray, sand, brown and white are sponged over each other and gently blended to resemble the look of real stone. Before sponging, the stones were marked off with 1/4-inch painter’s tape. Note that the hall table top has been marbled using a simple technique using paint, glaze and a plastic bag to produce the veins and shading.
Wallpaper took a back seat as painted finishes flourished. Although sponging is no longer popular, the idea of texturing a wall with layers of paint, using a colored glaze to allow for manipulating the surface, is still in vogue.
Fresco, color-washing and antiquing are all timeless paint effects that appear in modern, as well as more traditional, homes. The living-room scene shown above features gorgeous fresco-look walls. Where are we today with paint?
The most asked question over the years has been, “What color should I paint my walls?” This is a personal choice and not always easy for me to answer without knowing who you are and what you like.
Paint is the quickest way to transform a room, and if you aren’t happy, it’s easy to change. We have moved from creamy whites as the common denominator to the shades of gray that are in vogue today. They are safe, comfortable, well suited to contemporary rooms and work well with just about any other color.
Wallpapers are back on trend, nudging painted wall finishes back somewhat. It’s interesting that many of the new wallpapers are designed to look and feel like painted finishes, adding similar texture and character without quite so much work.