Casa Garden

With a sky mural you can create an extraordinary feeling of airiness and space in a room. A night sky twinkling with far-off stars is a wonderful sight to behold as you drop off to sleep, or you can create a sense of infinite horizons with a soft blue skyscape with gently drifting clouds.

Step 1: Pick a Design

Your skyscape will depend on where you want it. You can create an impression of a sky-covered room in different ways. To create height and airiness in a living room you might want to use trompe l’oeil painting, creating a faux skylight on the ceiling that reveals sunny sky and wisps of cloud. A more labor-intensive and more ambitious project involves painting an entire ceiling. You don’t have to stop at the edge of the ceiling and extending it onto your vertical walls can enhance the illusion.

Step 2: Pick a Technique

You will probably use color washing to create the blue background. Color washing creates the subtly varied, slightly textured finish that you will need for the sky. For the clouds themselves, you have a choice. Sponging is the way to achieve that soft, puffy cloud look using faux painting techniques. You can also buy ready-made stencils, or design kits that will allow you to transfer designs from a paper (or other) pattern onto a surface. Then you can apply the paint with a sponge or brush, depending on the design.

Step 3: Suitable Paints.

You can’t go wrong with acrylic or latex paints for indoor faux painting. Make sure your surface is well-prepared and sealed. Avoid flat paint as a base coat and go for a low gloss satin or pearl paint instead. Then use your water-based acrylics for your sky, followed by the clouds. To protect your mural, a transparent sealer may be a good idea.

Colorwashing uses two or more different shades of the same or complementary hues to create pleasing swirls and gradations of color. Choose colors that will go with your dcor. Decide whether you want bright blues or subtle gray-blues. For a night sky, consider stars in the paint that are invisible by day but glows in the dark. Fluorescent paints that come in a range of colors are always a popular choice for ceilings in children’s rooms.

Step 4: Preparations

Clear your room; cover the floor and furniture with drop cloths and pitch your ladder. For complex designs you may need a platform on a scaffold to make it easier to apply the paint on your ceiling. Clean, plug holes and cracks with putty, sand and seal patches and prime the whole with a suitable base coat – as noted, avoid flat paints as a base. You are now ready to create your skyscape.

Step 5: Application

Depending on your design, you can then apply your paint, color washing the sky background and using your chosen technique (brush, sponging, and stencils) to create your clouds. A night sky doesn’t require a black or deep blue ceiling, though these can be effective. A simple sky effect is achieved in a bedroom simply by using fluorescent paint that is invisible in the daytime but absorbs light and emits it after dark.

Step 6: Final Flourishes

You may want the tranquil simplicity of a plain expanse of sky, but you could also add some celestial extras. If you have some confidence in your abilities and it fits the design you could add rainbows, distant birds and other sky phenomena to complete your heavenly view.

Tags: decorating, gardening, home, home and garden, home improvement, interior design, painting

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