Painting a residential mural will transform a room.
A residential mural can extend the space of a room and transform its interior architecture. Or it can simply serve to decorate a wall with selected images. The trompe l'oeil mural painting method creates scenes that are realistic enough to "fool the eye," such as the illusion of looking through an open window at a landscape or city street. Residential murals can also be decorative images painted singly or in groups: a child's favorite cartoon characters on her bedroom wall, grape clusters hanging from a vine around the kitchen or a vase of flowers on a pedestal in the entry hall.
Instructions
1. Select the location for your mural and consider your goal. This process is easier if your goal is to decorate a child's room, a kitchen or bathroom wall with simple images. It is more difficult if you have in mind a complete landscape, cityscape or other scene that will significantly change the appearance of a room. Every potential location for a mural has its own unique set of challenges and restrictions.
2. Sketch the design for your mural. An approximate scale drawing of the room with the mural blocked in will give you the best idea of how it will look. Observe the amount of light in the room and where it's coming from, the location of windows and doors, the placement of furniture, the color scheme and the overall size of the room. In addition to painting a scene that will lend beauty and charm to your room, your goal may be to brighten a dark wall or give the illusion of more space in a small room.
3. Transfer your mural design to the wall. This can be done by sketching freehand directly on the wall in pencil while referring to your sketch, making a transparency of the image and using an overhead projector to enlarge it on the wall, or using the grid method. Some artists find that free drawing the image directly on the wall is easier, faster and gives them the most freedom.
4. Protect the floor with a tarp before beginning to paint. Apply large areas of acrylic color first with a large brush, and add detail and highlights later with smaller brushes. Use glass jars to mix colors, and protect them from drying out with a screw-on cap. If you use more than one coat of color, allow each coat to dry for a couple of hours before applying more paint. Stand back frequently to examine your work. Mural images are large, and hard to assess up close.
5. Let the paint dry for at least a week. Though acrylic paint may be dry to the touch, it can take a long time for the paint to completely dry underneath. Then protect the mural by spraying it with a matte finish spray sealant.
