The popular saying is that the walls look and feel as comfortable as old jeans, the denim faux finish is catching up like wild fire with homes of all ages and styles. With no set color palette combinations and design technique faux denim can range anywhere from a nearly white (stonewashed) look, to a deep indigo threaded affect.

This unique technique of creating walls that resemble Denims is a simple way of fashioning a warm and welcoming feeling to any part of your home. This particular style of Faux will create the look of panel’s denim, similar to wallpaper panels. This usually takes about three-days to complete, allowing a day for the base coats to dry off, and two days to complete the denim faux finish.

As with all faux finishes, I recommend perfecting your technique on a practice board before beginning on the walls. Practice makes perfection, so take your time to get the right hang. Begin by taping around the ceiling, windows, doors, floor trim, and any other area that you don’t won’t the paint to get in, use a high-quality nylon- polyester brush to paint around the ceiling and trim work. Make sure that all sections of the bedroom are less than 42 inches wide as any section larger than this will create difficulty in reaching the area when trying to get a streamlined faux finish.

Start by painting the walls with a base coat of your choice. Remember that this coat of paint must be a gloss finish, using a moderately-loaded roller apply the base coat. When rolling, finish each section with a smooth ceiling-to-floor stroke to help eliminate roller marks. Allow the walls to dry thoroughly before applying a second base coat to the walls. Once both base coats have been applied to the walls, you should allow the walls to dry for at least 24 hours.

Once the base coat has completely dried, start with the glaze color of your choice begin rolling a thin layer of glaze over the walls of the room one section at a time. Once you have rolled an entire section with the glaze color, then you can begin creating the faux texture of the denim walls. Use a weaver to firmly pull the glaze from left to right on the wall. Then use the brush to reverse the stroke from right to left over. As an alternative you can always use a close pined comb or anything similar. Be sure the brush is dry and that you apply enough pressure to slightly bend the bristles when applying. Wipe the bristles on a lint-free rag between swipes.

This process should be continued a couple of times over the same area wiping the glaze off the brush with a lint free cloth in between strokes. You will continue doing the motion all the way down the section of the walls that have 40 already been painted. Repeat this left-toright, right-to-left process for each strip until you reach the bottom of the section. If you are working in a corner, be sure to drag the brush away from the wall only.

Finally, use one single swipe down the wall from top to bottom with the brush to create a vertical line. This time you should not be pushing firmly on the brush but just lightly touching the walls for a vertical line to be created. Do this over the entire section of the glazed wall to create a true denim look.

In order to further enhance the affect, Once you have textured the wall section with the Weaver you can use a Check Roller to create denim walls that look worn and old. Use the check roller and roll horizontally and vertically through the entire glazed section of the walls. This will make the denim walls look natural.

Remove the tape along the vertical sections while the glaze is still wet, but leave the tape along the ceiling and trim work.

Anwar Ali