My recent client Nancy had just moved into a beautiful new condo with a water view in East Boston – but she wanted something different to offset the “new white box” feel of the space… which is where I came in!
To keep with the light airiness of the rooms but still add interest, Nancy had the vision of painting one wall in her guest room to look like a whitewashed faux brick wall. After looking at the wall together and considering the furniture in the room, we decided on a color scheme and I was off to the first step in the process.
Before jumping right to the final project, I start with a concept board to make sure I am accomplishing the look my client is going for. In this case, Nancy and I had settled on the colors, but discussed both an option where the bricks were close to white as well as an option where the bricks were a little darker (as if the original bricks were dark and showing through the whitewash). Below is the sample board I showed to Nancy.
Nancy liked all of them, but decided to stick with lightest option that also included shadows under the bricks (option “2b”).
With the selection made – I was on the final faux whitewashed brick wall! I started by painting the wall the “mortar” color and then added speckles of a darker color to approximate the texture of the concrete. With this done, I was on the painting the base color of the bricks – which was just a couple of shades lighter that the mortar color. Similar to the first step, I also added random speckles of a slightly darker color for texture. To really make the bricks look natural, but still subtle and pretty – I then brushed in touches of a lighter color on each brick.
The final touch was using a glaze of the darker color I originally used for texture in the mortar to create the shadow under the brick. To create this effect, I needed to hand-paint the shadow under each individual brick!
Nancy was thrilled wit the result and is now enjoying the newest touch of character in her beautiful new home!
Enjoy!
The full wall
Close-up view
The final room with furniture!