Coved Ceilings Charm

Coved ceilings are a unique architectural detail found in many old homes and in some newly built homes, too. Sometimes coved ceilings are set off by molding, which can be added to accent this architectural feature. Contrasting colors can be used to paint the highest point of the ceiling, and a faux finish can accent a coved ceiling beautifully, drawing the eye upward to appreciate this architectural detail and making it a focal point in your home.

Refinished Attic Spaces Shine

Refinished attic spaces make charming bedrooms, offices and guest rooms but can pose a challenge when it comes time to choose paint colors. Pitched roofs, long rooms and low ceilings are just a few of the challenges attic spaces pose for homeowners. Warm colors and neutrals make refinished attics cozy places to read, work or study. Or, ask your painting professional about choosing contrasting colors, stripes or using other painting techniques to highlight unusually shaped attic spaces.

Dormers Sparkle with Accent Colors

Dormers are a charming addition to any home, providing extra space and a spot for a window. When you’re thinking about having dormers painted, consider accent paint colors to emphasize your dormers. Yes, continuing the paint colors used in the rest of the room will work, but it’s a safe choice.  Draw attention to dormers by having the wall painted a contrasting color. If there is a window in the dormer, the molding can also be painted with an accent color. These don’t have to be shocking paint choices- an off-white room is balanced with a taupe or pale yellow wall and bright white molding around the dormer windows.

Emphasize Arched Walkways

Arched walkways between rooms are a charming addition common in many vintage homes. Take advantage of this architectural detail by having the wall with the arched walkway painted a contrasting color or by using a patterned paint technique, like a stencil. In Arts & Crafts homes, vivid reds, greens and blues are not at all uncommon- ask your Sundeleaf painting pros to give you more tips for having unusually-shaped rooms painted in your home.

Soft Paint Colors Turn a Bedroom into an Oasis

Use soft paint colors to help make your bedroom a restful place to unwind and end your day. Pale green, soft blue and soothing greige (a beautiful shade of gray and beige) help turn your bedroom into a quiet oasis. Yellow, lavender and off-white infused with a hint of color (blush, taupe or blue) also work well in bedrooms. Place furniture in the bedroom so that windows are a focal point, and sunlight washes over your newly painted walls for best effect. Use a contrasting paint color for attached bathrooms, closets or sitting rooms.

Bright Paint Colors

If you prefer a pop of color, tangerine or lime paint work beautifully in bedrooms. These walls especially pop when surrounding by bright white moulding. Red painted walls should almost always be used in moderation in the bedroom. Instead of painting an entire bedroom in red, use a contrasting color, like dove gray for every wall except the wall behind the bed. Paint the wall behind the bed red to make it pop and to draw attention to a large headboard. Consider painted stripes or chair rail accents to add additional drama to your bedroom.

Our expert staff will help you choose paint color combinations for your bedroom. Tell us what you’re looking for- soft, romantic colors, or exciting dramatic color combinations, and we’ll help you choose the right colors for your bedroom.

Add opulence to any room in your home with an antique finish. Using a faux finish adds depth and luxury to painted walls. This treatment can be done in several ways. An antique finish can have a leather or “sueded” appearance, and can be done using a tonal color-on-color paint scheme or in contrasting colors.

Get the Look of Leather with a Faux Finish

One type of faux finish that works well on painted walls is a method that looks like leather or suede when completed. This type of antique finish is often created using shades of brown, taupe, yellow or gold. Leather-look paint finish works especially well in dens, living rooms and family rooms. This is one of many ways that paint can take the place of wallpaper. There’s no messy, expensive paper to hang, but the end result is a gorgeous finish that looks rich and aged.

Color-on-Color Antique Finish

Add warmth and interest to a great room with a color-on-color antique finish. Gold over gold, ivory over ivory and pale yellow over pale yellow are all examples of common color on color antique finish combinations. When you choose a color on color, the look is subtle, yet expensive. If you don’t want subtlety, try contrasting colors like gold over red to add high drama to a dining room or an entryway.

Antique finishes, faux finishes and similar paint treatments should be done by professionals. If done incorrectly, the finish won’t look antique- it will just look slipshod. If you’re considering an antique finish for your home, ask the experts at Sundeleaf Painting about processes used to achieve this look. The professional consultants at Sundeleaf will help you choose colors and styles that suit your rooms, your furniture, and, your personal style.

Stencils Work Well in Small Spaces

A foyer or an entryway is the perfect place to use stencils in your home. If you don’t have a sunroom, but love the outdoors, stencils of plants, trees and leaves add energy to a foyer. Your bathroom brings the beach into your home with stenciled saltwater fish, palm trees and sea turtles.  If your staircase is lined with photos or paintings, ornate “frames” can be stenciled on the wall to feature your collection.

Stencils Accent a Beautiful Bedroom

There are many ways painted stencils can accent a bedroom. In a children’s room, sports-themed stencils can be used to bring basketball, baseball and football into the room. In the master bedroom, formal stencils work well- trailing cherry blossoms, delicate florals and bold stripes can turn any wall into an accent wall. Keep a guest room interesting and fun with stenciled walls of gingham, stripes or plaid.

Punch Up Your Kitchen with Stencils

Stencils brighten up a kitchen and add fun to the space where we seem to spend so much of our time. Stencils that work well in a kitchen include nature themes, like ivy, birds, butterflies and flowers. A brocade-like stencil or fleur-de-lis adds luxury to a formal kitchen. And a classic country kitchen sparkles with stenciled roosters, or words and phrases that evoke country living.

No matter what types of stencils you choose, they need to be perfectly applied. The professional consultants at Sundeleaf Painting can help you choose the perfect stencils for your home. Our consultants will help you choose paint colors, show you examples of our past work and provide input to make sure you pick the stencils that are perfect for you.

Painted Paneling Artfully Blends into the Woodwork

Paneling isn’t uncommon in old homes, but it can be a bit of a nightmare when you’re trying to update your home. There are a few options for painting paneling. Most homeowners want to downplay the paneling, so it becomes a less-obvious characteristic of the room. Soft, muted shades work well to deemphasize the paneling. Pale green, any shade of off-white and many lighter shades of taupe can all be good choices for painting paneled walls.

Rejuvenate a Hardwood Floor

Purists will say that it’s always a mistake to paint a hardwood floor, but actually, there can be good reasons for having your floors painted. If an old hardwood floor is stained or otherwise beyond repair, having the floor painted can be a less expensive option to replacing the floor.

A painted floor should be in colors that accent the rest of your room. Black, navy and forest green paint all work well on hardwood floors in living rooms and family rooms. In a sunroom or any room where the feel should be light and airy, pale blue, white or seafoam green will reflect back the sun beautifully.

Bring Molding Back to Life

If your rooms seem dull and drab, have the molding painted to bring life back in to your home. Fresh coats of primer and paint can brighten up any molding. Although many people choose to go with white molding, a classic look, some people choose brightly colored accent colors for their interior molding. If you like to be surrounded by color, having your molding painted can work for you.

Add Elegance to Your Hallway

Painting chair rail is an easy way to bring elegance into your dining room or hallway. Chair rail was frequently added to older homes, but the wood paneling often used with chair rail is sometimes too dark or too light for the rest of the home.  When having your chair rail painted, look for neutral tones that off-set the other walls in the room. If you use yellow in a dining room, use ivory for your chair rail. If you want to draw attention to the chair rail, paint the wood a royal blue or a deep scarlet.

Get help with all of your painting decisions with the pros at Sundeleaf Painting. Our color experts can help you decide what colors will work best with the wood surfaces in your home.

Add Elegance to a Formal Dining Room with Painted Stripes
Infuse elegance into a formal dining room by using vertical stripes that combine a flat paint and a gloss or semi-gloss paint that are the same color. Using the same color paint for stripes is a subtle effect and works especially well with ivory, taupe and slate blue. For a formal dining room, try same color stripes in widths of eight to twelve inches.

Paint Stripes in Children’s Bedrooms for a Fun Effect
In a child’s bedroom, paint fun stripes in varying shades of color and in varying widths. A girl’s bedroom painted with shades of pink, from pale pink to fuchsia, might be overlaid with stencils of flowers. A boy’s room comes alive with painted vertical stripes of aqua, green and sky blue.  In children’s bedrooms, the stripes don’t have to be completely symmetrical and in fact, using different widths and colors adds interest to a room.

Accent Adult Bedrooms with Painted Stripes
Painting stripes in bedrooms doesn’t have to be relegated to the kids’ bedrooms. Paint the wall behind the headboard of the bed in bold horizontal stripes from floor to ceiling to create a focal point in the room. If you have a desk or a chaise lounge in your bedroom, highlight that wall with painted horizontal stripes.

Brighten Up a Basement with Painted Stripes
We often think of basements as gloomy after-thoughts, but they don’t have to be dark or dreary. One of the biggest trends right now in painting interiors is to use a solid color around the room, and then accent with stripes. Start with a bold color, and ask to have a 2-foot section in the middle of the walls all the way around the room taped off for stripes. Use contrasting colors for the stripes and consider adding a stencil to break up the stripes and to add interest to the room.

Ask our expert staff how we can help you brighten up your home with painted stripes.

Chair Rail Painting Techniques
Painting the chair rail in a dining room is an eye-catching way to use paint to ground a room. The chair rail is the molding that sometimes appears along walls at the height of the tops of the chairs, or about waist-high. Chair rails are meant to protect the walls from damage and wear and tear. Ask to have a contrasting color painted below the chair rail molding. The color combinations are endless, but a timeless and beautiful accent is to use a shade that is deeper and darker than the paint above the chair rail molding.

Chair Rail Painting Design Ideas
You can achieve a similar effect in any room without using the chair rail molding. Ask for a painted stripe where the chair rail molding would normally be affixed and use contrasting colors above and below the stripe. You can also forgo the painted stripe altogether, instead requesting two complementary colors of paint that meet at traditional chair rail height.

Bathrooms Sparkle with Chair Rail Painting
A bathroom is an especially good place to use this technique. Bathrooms are all too often ignored when upgrading and painting interiors. Instead of defaulting to white on white for your bathrooms, try a stand-out color combination instead. Use white for the top of the room, and from the (imaginary) chair rail line to the floor, ask for a pale turquoise or soft green paint instead.

Talk to a member of our experienced staff for more details about chair rail painting, to find out if this technique can work for your home.

Choosing the Best Paint Colors Based on Meaning and Emotion
Many people opt to select paint colors based on emotion and meaning. For example, green is thought to be a soothing, relaxing color. Green has long been the color of choice for doctors, hospitals and other stress-inducing environments. You don’t have to choose “hospital green” for your home. There are many shades of soft green that can still invoke calm, making the room a tranquil respite, while being stylish and beautiful, too.

Choosing Paint Color Based on Furniture
We tend to keep our couches and beds for many years- even decades. And rightfully so; these are big purchases and unless they are accidentally damaged, there’s no real reason to replace a couch or a bed until it wears out. If you know that certain pieces of furniture will remain unchanged, use this as your guide for selecting paint colors. A dark brown leather couch snuggles into the warmth of a slate blue room. A white bed pops against a deep red striped accent wall. Pale yellow paint makes an antique armoire pop and warm jewel tones can brighten older furniture in any guest room.

Choose Paint Color Based on Flooring
Your flooring is also something that isn’t likely to change very often and can be a factor in choosing paint colors. If you have light oak hardwood floors, you might be surprised to find that they are enhanced by orange walls and white molding. Dark cherry floors are highlighted by painting the walls a dark red. Berber carpet lends itself to almost any wall color. Colored carpets benefit with neutral tones on walls.
Windows and other structural elements in a home can impact painting decisions. Homes with windows that are features, like bay windows, or a window that frames a tree in the yard, are further emphasized with chair rail painting techniques.

Luckily, our expert staff can provide input and ideas on color combinations to use in your home. Tell us that you’re undecided, and we’ll walk you through some color choices for painting your home. Having that all-important second opinion is critical, and can definitely help you make your final decision.

Black can be a striking color choice, especially on large windows or in rooms with tall ceilings. Carefully coordinate the color choice for walls as dark wall colors with black trim could make the room seem dark or small. Consider tan or taupe wall paint or a paint color with a light tinge of olive. Tall windows with black moulding paint and black wooden slat blinds will be quite stunning. If there are columns and chair railing, they too can be highlighted with the black paint.

If trimming a whole room in black seems risky, try painting the handrails in your stairwell. After a proper professional sanding, cleaning and priming of the outdated white oak handrails, they could be finished with a beautiful satin black paint.

The kitchen too is a room where a small section of black paint can have an enormous affect. Black crown molding around white cabinets or an island painted black gives a sharp, clean feeling to the room. It is surprising how the eye is drawn to the black highlights in any room.

Talk to Sundeleaf Painting, Portland’s experts on interior painting, about framing your kitchen, handrails, family room or doors with black trim.

Here are several examples of using black trim paint:

First, photos from the House Beautiful blog, an interview with designer Windsor Smith

Next, black moulding and built-ins, from the Design Sponge blog:

And black interior doors from the Design Around Denver blog:

There is still time to schedule a painter and choose colors.  If you want to make a striking curbside statement, choose a bold color like a tulip red or a bright gold color.

Look for a color that will complement the exterior color of your home, but will draw attention to the entryway.  A more subtle color can complement the exterior and also enhance the interior foyer color. Your paint professional can provide information about the correct type of paint to use on the door and will assist in providing color suggestions.  The project may require a primer (for color enhancement and adhesion) and several coats of paint may be needed to provide adequate coverage.

This entryway “facelift” project will create the perfect back drop for the holiday wreath and will enhance the beauty of your home all year long!

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