Blemishes are unfortunate occurrences on all of life’s surfaces. Try though we might to banish them, they still manage to decorate our skin, our cars – and even the walls of our homes. Luckily, unlike with skin or automobile paint, with architectural interiors there are a lot of different options for getting rid of – or covering up – blemishes. You can spackle, smooth, and prime, you can rip out and replace whole sheets of drywall…. or, for a creative alternative, you can try this texture painting method to render the blemishes on even a highly damaged wall totally invisible.
Texture paints are concocted using the same ingredients as regular paints, but there is much more filler pigment and bulking additives mixed in so that the final consistency is much thicker. Rather than running on as a smooth, silky liquid, texture paints are more like pancake batter, and they hold some of their dimension when applied. Operating almost like a thin coat of wet plaster, texture paints allow you to sculpt and contour the surface of your coating, creating unique effects – and successfully hiding any blemishes in color or texture that might exist in your substrate.
To apply a layer of texture paint to your wall, it is first (as always) important to prep. You should sand and scrape off any old paint and loose or flaky material, patch major holes, and use a competent primer to ready the surface for its coating. You don’t need to worry very much about visual coverage, however, nor about dents, nicks, dings, scrapes, or seams from unremovable old coating layers – the texture paint will hide all of that like it was never there!
Next, pick a texture for your surface. Any texture you pick, paired with the thickness of the paint, will be sufficient to totally disguise any blemishes. You can create speckles, stripes, or dapples by using a special textured roller. You can cut swirls into the paint, or create an irregular stucco effect, by using a trowel. You can press a textured surface – like crumpled wax paper – along the surface of the paint when it is tacky to create a marbled effect. You can use a small brush to pull out tiny peaks and valleys. The sky is the limit when it comes to texture options – you are only as limited as your imagination.
When you apply the paint, work in sections, slapping it up there and then creating the texture in that section before moving on to the adjacent section. Unless your texture involves a strict repeating pattern, provide some textural overflow from one section to the next, so that you do not create seams in your texture. Paint should be applied at roughly 1/16 inches thick, at room temperature to achieve the ideal viscosity.
So now you’re all set! At the end of the project, your walls will have a bold rustic look – and they’ll be, (as far as the eye can see), totally blemish-free!