I painted for about 6 years during high school and parts of college. Started out doing apartments so of course no faux finishes there (just plain 'ol white.) In the end, I ended up doing new construction painting and remodels of some very nice homes, and as a result experimented with a few faux finishes. Many of these were in the $500,000 to $1,000,000 range (the houses not the finishes
) which is a LOT in oklahoma. I found a general trend that the more expensive the home, the more faux finishes they wanted. One guy even wanted each room a different color, and the ceiling had to be tinted the color of the room.... MY clothes looked like a rainbow after that one!
Anyway, enough nonsense... I have two favorites that I will mention
The faux suede from sherwin williams is really cool.
link here:
http://www.sherwin-williams.com/do_it_yo...ques/softsuede/It is really easy, just time consuming. The instructions say to roll on a coat, then come back and brush overlapping "X's" all over the wall.
Instead of dipping the brush 5 million times, we rolled the walls once and let it dry. Then we came back and rolled a second time, with someone comming behind and "X'ing" the wet just rolled paint. You have to be careful not get to far ahead of the guy X'ing if you are the one rolling though. this way is a lot easier but still very time consuming and tedious. The look is very nice in the end. I have done some tan(typical suede color), pale yellow, green, and red versions. I think out of all of these the suede color was my favorite, and the red was my least favorite (allthough it was still pretty cool looking). The green and yellow looked pretty good too.
Another really cool (but even more time consuming) finish is venetian plaster by behr.
link here :
http://www.behr.com/behrx/expert/activity.jsp?aid=616&subnav=interior&leftNav=noSteps This is actually put on with a mud knife instead of a paintbrush. IT is the consistency of runny silly putty. You basically need to paint the wall the same shade as the plaster (but make it quite a bit lighter.) Then you go through and randomly smear the stuff on the wall (thinly)with no rhyme or reason. be sure you are leaving wall showing through inbetween your smears. Then you come back and skim coat the entire wall with a thin coating. Then you come back and skim a clear coat over the entire wall. Then you come back and 'burnish' it by rubbing your mud knife over the entire wall in a circular motion. This takes a VERY long time to do. It is also a little difficult to get everything to match if you have different people doing the troweling. The first time we did this we had 4 guys, each on there own wall... and each wall came out different because we each had our own techniques... Also once you start a wall you pretty much have to finish it, beacause if you come back later you will not be able to match what you were doing.
I reccomend trying it in a closet or on some spare drywall to see how it looks first.
The end result is VERY cool, and the walls are slick to the touch.
I have never been a fan of sponge finishes because if you don't do it right it looks way too 'busy'
When I buy a house I plan on doing venetian plaster in the kitchen, and suede on the office or bedroom.
Sorry this was so long!
The problem with both of these finishes is that if you decide to paint it a regular color later you pretty much have to re-skim the wall with drywall mud and sand it. the reason being that the venetian plaster is so slick, and the suede is a little rough to the touch because they have some sand in it.
