by KT Leeson

Gone are the days of tacky felt wallpaper or simplistic sponged-on paint. Today’s options for redecorating walls are more sophisticated, subtle and in some cases, less expensive and invasive.
With all the faux finishing techniques out there – marbleizing, color washing, silk treatments and wood graining to name a few– the possibilities are endless and can be customized to the individual. There are also custom-framed mirrors, murals, trompe-l’oeil and other artistic ways to take your walls from boring to beautiful.
“The whole business has evolved,” says Luis Santiago of European Paint & Textures. “When I first started 17 years ago, everything used was primarily oil-based materials, but those have been phased out.”
One of the popular techniques today, according to Santiago, is Marmorino, which is Italian for little marble. “The wealthy could afford slabs of marble in their homes, but that was too expensive for working-class Italians, so artisans came up with a technique of mixing marble dust and lime plasters. It looks very good and it wears well. It’s alkaline in nature so it resists mold. You’re essentially creating a veneer.”
Santiago says that the best materials come from Italy and other European countries, but the U.S. painters are far ahead of their European counterparts in terms of technique.
“I went to Barcelona and I thought I was going to learn all sorts of new decorative techniques,” he says, “but I ended up teaching them. They have the materials, but everyone seems to apply them the same way. They haven’t experimented with blending colors, using two different materials and layering. They loved my distressed finishes.”
Santiago says that people want something that is new, but looks old. “I do a lot of wine cellars with that old-grotto look.”
According to local certified interior designer Kathy Golden, another popular choice for walls, believe it or not, is wallpaper. “We’re starting to see an upswing,” says Golden of Golden Designs.
But this is not the over-the-top textured wallpaper we remember from the ’70s. “Now you can hand-color the paper. You can also rip it, take those torn pieces and apply them to the wall,” she says. “Wallpaper can also be customized with a gold leafing, or veins for a marble look.”
Another redecorating tip that Golden recommends is breaking up a wall with panels, framed by crown moulding.
“This works especially well in a dining room, which is usually a small room where the walls are pretty bare because the furniture’s in the middle of the room, and there are often no windows. Some clients may not have room for other furniture, and may not be able to afford expensive artwork for the walls. So we can picture out panels, paint the actual wall one color and paint a coordinating color inside the panels.”
Whatever technique Golden recommends for her clients, she tries to keep their personality and individuality in mind at all times.
“I like to make a client happy with their room and make them feel like it’s theirs. If it’s artwork, I usually try to re-frame it; if it’s furniture, I might re-upholster it.”
Golden helped a North County client give her brand new home a touch of warmth and familiarity by incorporating an original piece of art with sentimental value.
“She wasn’t planning on bringing anything from the old house,” says Golden. “But I noticed a quaint watercolor of an otter, and it turned out that it had been painted by one of her dear friends. Her new home was on the ocean, so we put the watercolor upstairs in the living room above her fireplace, and used sea colors for the wall color behind it,” says Golden.
Another facet of our walls that we often overlook when it comes to redecorating is mirrors.
“Most people are used to looking at a straight-edge mirror,” says Terri Martin of Mirror Makeovers. “That’s what most tract homes have.”
But there’s a way to take the utilitarian look of a mirror and transform it into a piece of artwork.
“We come in with a huge frame that goes on top of the glass, which gives a designer look, without taking down the mirror, patching the wall and putting up new glass. A really beautiful, ornate gold or old-wood frame can give it that finishing touch and warm up the glass.”
Derek Delibertis, a faux finisher based in South Bay, has so many wall re-finishing techniques to offer, he hardly ever repeats the same design twice.
“Everything is custom,” he says.
Delibertis offers faded frescoes, Venetian plaster, ragging off, color washing, leatherizing, strie, silk treatments, wood graining, marbleizing, murals and stippling (a technique of pouncing small areas on the wall with the brush).
“I like to accent or embellish what they already have and really set off the architecture,” he says.
Delibertis says his faded frescos are very popular. “They’re old-world style, more subtle.” He once painted an image of a bamboo tree and it curved to match the curve in the architecture.
The benefits of faux finish, according to Delibertis, are that “it’s less expensive and you don’t have to rip things out.”
Katherine Hunter of Hunter Specialty Finishes and Sheri Skiba of Sheri’s Creations are painters/designers who put a major emphasis on the emotional effects of wall redecorating.
“Colors have subtle energies,” says Hunter. “We are very affected by color, which has a vibrational frequency that changes depending on hue and saturation. You can change the way a room makes you feel by the textures and color in it. If you’ve got a hyperactive kid, you’re not going to put them in a bright red room. To calm someone down, we use softer colors. We know that intuitively because we do baby’s rooms in pastel. But very few people actually put that into practice in the rest of their home.”
Hunter and Skiba used that philosophy when redecorating the bedroom of a quiet, contemplative young girl who felt overwhelmed by her 10-foot ceiling.
“We broke up the wall so the ceiling wasn’t so intimidating.” The decorators used a pink striped pattern on the lower half of the wall, a light blue geometric design on the top, divided in half by a horizontal green stripe, all done in pastel colors.
Staying true to the client’s personal taste is the key to being a good designer, according to Hunter and Skiba.
“What works for one person doesn’t always work for someone else,” says Skiba. “You can’t give formulas; that’s why we interview people and get a sense of who they are, what they’re envisioning their life to be. And then we ask ourselves, how do we help manifest that?”