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How to Paint Faux Castle Walls

Shiromi Nassreen

Faux castle walls are a fun way to decorate a child's bedroom, or to add a medieval feel to a history loving homeowner's living room. The entire process takes just a few hours, over a couple of days and is a surprisingly easy technique to learn which gives amazing results.

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  1. Prepare the wall. Patch any visible holes. Use masking tape to mask the baseboard edges, ceiling edges, window edges and any other edges that you don't want painted. Also, don't forget to lay out a drop cloth to protect the floors. Paint the brown or grey basecoat and allow to dry thoroughly before proceeding any further.

  2. Using chalk, draw the stones of the castle wall. Use a template such as a piece of cardboard so that the stones are relatively uniform in size. The stones should be roughly rectangular in shape but without the sharp corners. Although you want them to be similar, the stones should vary slightly in size and shape, to create that natural stone effect. Leave a space a finger's width in size between each "stone." This space is for the faux mortar. Remember to keep stepping back and looking at the overall picture. You don't want the faux stones to look too uniform or identical.

  3. Use light colored paint to create highlights in the faux natural stone. Use a one or two inch wide brush and roughly paint the light colored paint within the faux stone. You do not want the stone entirely filled with light paint. Instead you want a rough squiggle, going across the top and the center of the square.

  4. Use dark colored paint to create shadows. Apply the dark paint in the same rough squiggle to the bottom and sides of the stone. Also add a couple of dabs of dark paint further towards the center of the stone.

  5. Use scrunched up plastic to texturize the wall. Take a small balled up piece of plastic, like a plastic bag, and bang it firmly against the faux stone to create a texture. Use the medium color base paint to make any corrections if a stone is too light or too dark.

  6. Using the base color, touch up any of the faux mortar that got texturized. Add any last minute touch ups. Allow the paint to dry, then, remove the chalk lines by applying with a damp cloth. You now have a faux castle wall.