Faux painting techniques take some skill to execute and therefore it can be frustrating at times when the results on the wall don’t come as nicely as they did on the sample board you made prior to starting your project.
Rather than starting over again and wasting a lot of time, you can salvage the job and actually in many cases, make it look better by overglazing.
Walls are harder to paint than sample boards
It is always advisable to practice or work out your faux finish on a piece of illustration board prior to doing it “for real” on the wall. I almost always do this - and I’m a pro. I want to work out the colors and sequencing of the technique just to be sure, before I do it on the walls of the customer’s house.
Most wall problems occur with lapping and inside corners
What makes walls a bit different from a sample board are the inside corners and lapping issues you may encounter on real walls in a real room.
Lapping
Lap marks are heavy bands of color where you overlapped sections of faux finish painting together. This happens when the previous section of work dries or sets up before you can blend the next section with it. You must work efficiently and briskly when doing faux wall techniques. Use a glaze that has good open time, and don’t pause to admire your work until you complete the wall. This is primarily true with negative techniques. Positive techniques where you apply the glaze/paint to the wall, instead of remove it, are far less likely to show lapping.
I almost always make use of the feather for getting tight into the corner - regardless of the tool used for the rest of the wall. Make the feather work and look closely like your wall technique. You only need to “fake it” for a half inch or so - so be creative, but don’t try to jam a big roller, sponge or rag into a corner that is won’t fit into, you will have an overdone, dark blotchy mess. Don’t shy away from the corner either because you can’t fit the tool into it. Plan ahead for corners.
Overglazing
Negative techniques are very hard to spot correct. I usually approach difficult negative techniques with a “back up plan” consisting of overglazing, just in case, so I can walk away from the job with my head high, rather than embarrassed.
What is overglazing?
Overglazing is simply a second layer of faux technique over the top of the previous finish. The overglazing technique should be one that is easily controlled, and often I prefer it to be a positive technique too. Positive techniques (ragging on etc..) allow you to step back and judge your work, while you take it slowly and carefully add paint to the wall.
Overglazing possibilities
As mentioned previously, ragging on is a nice overglazing technique. Use a color that blends with the underlying finish . Often it is good to use the base coat color first to “open up” blotchy bands of lapping and other spots that didn’t quite come out right first, before doing a second round of ragging with a complimentary color.
Negative techniques do not work well for overglazing because you cannot add the technique as needed to the surface. Usually with a negative technique, you have to do the whole surface uniformly with the technique, this makes it harder to “even out” the uneven, blotchy lapped or whatever surface underneath.
One of the nice things about overglazing, besides preserving your hard work that didn’t turn out right, is that is adds detail to the wall. The more detail, the more professional the job looks. The downside is that it takes more time to do, but it beats “whiting out” the surface and starting over from scratch.
Use overglazing to spice up simple, boring finishes
To make a simple technique look more sophisticated, add an overglazing technique over the top. Two layers of faux will add some pizzazz to the finish. You can create new finishes by simply combining two single techniques, one over the top of the other.
Inside corners
These often end up too blotchy and heavy or under painted with a kind of negative “shadow” of nothingness in the corner because the tool would not fit all the way into the corner. Use a feather, cut sponge, sash brush (to stipple), small sections of rag or whatever you can to get into the corners cleanly. Make sure you mask off the adjacent wall so there are no concerns with bumping it with your rag, sponge etc..
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Correcting Faux Wall Painting Techniques
By Overglazing
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