How to Make a Faux Wood Grain Finish

Series Summary

The word faux is a French word that translates to mean false. It is called false or faux painting because it utilizes techniques that enable the artist to emulate different textures and appearances. Faux painting is an easy, beautiful painting technique that anyone can use to add interest to traditionally painted walls. In this free video on interior painting and design techniques, a professional set decorator and house painter demonstrates various faux painting techniques. Learn the materials necessary for creating faux finishes, such as rags, brushes and rollers. Find out how to faux paint by dragging, stripping and ragging, as well as how to create a faux marble finish and a faux brick finish. Watch these free videos to add flair to a home decorating project.

Video Transcript

"Hi my name is Shana Siegel here at Just Scenic Creations in New York City. In this clip we are going to discuss how to make a faux wood grain finish and for this kind of a technique what you need are a few tools. You need a couple sizes of brushes that we use. You need, I really like these funny, used specifically for wood graining and see how it has got this like this curved shape and it has got these rings and what that means is you can drag it across and by changing the angle of your wrist you can kind of like create the same sort of effect as actual wood grain the way that it changes it. It is not straight it is not like a machine that creates wood grain although many machines do the most convincing ones look natural and have natural changes and look organic so that is what you are going for is organicness. So we have prepared the surface. It is dry and it is primed with the color we would like underneath and depending on the kind of wood you will choose different colors to do this with. I have also prepared a glaze which you can either buy a premade glaze or you can mix your own using a clear water based polyurethane and just a little bit of pigment or there is a variety of different glazes that you can buy and mix yourself or buy. So I'm just going to always keep my brush strokes going in the same direction because you can see right away it has already started to do a little bit of graining, just like that. Now I am going to try with this tool, start with it on one edge and you kind of gradually rock towards yourself. Now I don't love how that one came out so I am going to knock off some of that pigment and maybe do it again, glazes give you time to do that if you like and what you can do it kind of creates a nice start and then you can just go back with a brush and kind of soften it up and kind of create some of your own lines as well with what is happening there. Let's do this again. You really should work it until you like what is going on and always, always, always do a practice before you actually do whatever the piece is that you have in mind to grain a wall or doorway or whatever. Let's do it a couple of other places, another swipe of that. Now these tools also have on them these comb thingies so you can kind of drag it across that way as well, very similar to that comb dragging technique. A lot of these techniques can be mix and match to create really interesting effects. You can always go back and sort of, maybe it's too light in some places. So that's your very basic most basicest form of woodgraining. There are very many levels past that but that is your beginner strategy right there. This is Shana Siegel showing you how the beginners do their woodgraining faux finish."