As part of my specialty painting services, I often do paint “repairs” where I have to match everything from marble to wood to stone. For these repairs, I also sometimes need to match existing faux finishes – which can be particularly tricky… Which was definitely the case with a recent project!
A contractor partner called me to help with a project rehabbing a finished basement after repairs were done to fix water damage. The challenge was that all of the basement was previously painted in a faux finish with mural vines painted over it. In this case, the walls were originally painted one solid base color, and then a glaze with a second color was applied in a pattern over the top of it. What makes matching a faux finish tricky is that you can’t actually see either of the colors that make up that finish because the glaze is semi-transparent. This means that you can only see the base color through the translucency of the second color.
Fortunately, in this case sections of the wall had to be removed due to the water damage – which meant that I was able to bring samples of the existing faux finish into my studio. This was fantastic, because these colors were particularly challenging and required some trial and error to get a good match! I did get a sample I was happy with though, and both the contractor and homeowner were happy with what I came up with.
From there, I was on to the walls – but the challenge wasn’t over! After priming, painting and glazing – I then had the pattern to deal with. When applying a glaze, you can’t get it on the old section, because it will just make the overlap extremely dark. This means I had to stop my pattern along a sharp line and then blend the new pattern into the old using a whole different set of colors that match the look of the translucent combination of the original 2 colors!
After I got everything blended, I was on to the mural vines. Here I figured out that the original vines were painted with fine art oil paints - so I did the same, matching the colors on-site. For the vines, the color match was pretty straightforward, so I could concentrate on matching the style and patterning of the original vines to make it all seamless!
In the end, it was all worth it when the client said of my match “I never even dreamed this would be possible!”
Here are before and after shots of the different sections I needed to address:
Enjoy!
Hallway before
Hallway after!
Soffit before
Soffit after
Ceiling before
