How to paint Faux Denim

This is my son Noah’s bedroom.

 

I love, love, love faux denim on boy’s bedroom walls! Sometimes it is difficult to come up with a great faux technique for boys… but denim goes with SO much. Especially Pottery Barn Kids bedding. It’s always a go.

 

(Notice the tile in the bathroom above and the mirror this client had me paint. It all coordinated so well!)

You need to start with white SATIN paint on the walls. Anything less shiny than satin will not work well. The key to denim is starting with “panels”. You do this by using chalk lines to section off your walls and then fauxing denim every other panel the first day. Then every other panel the next day.

The blue is just eggshell or satin blue paint and glaze….you can do any shade of blue. Your mixture is 3:1 glaze to paint. Ralph Lauren has some AMAZING blue colors…..

You roll the glaze mixture on your wall panel and strie it both horizontally and vertically with “denim tools” from your local Home Depot stores. Or you can use a a stiff old paintbrush, or a wallpaper brush. Each of those will strie your glaze. Then, Home Depot sells a denim roller that you roll over your glaze to put little nicks into your blue color. It makes the denim look more authentic. Complete one panel at a time.

After letting those panels dry overnight… you tape off the remaining panels and overlap them by 1/4 to 1/2 inch, which gives you the dark line which is supposed to look like the seam on the side of your bluejeans.

After those panels dry overnight, you are ready for the stitching on the dark overlap lines. I’d love to let you think we painted these stitches all by hand. Which I guess we kinda did…. we just had a stencil. The stitching stencil tape comes in a roll which makes the process so easy. You use a little bottle of white acrylic paint for the stitching and pull off your stitching tape.

And that is it!

A denim faux finish is not hard… but it is a two-person project, unless you have some faux finishing experience. And…. it takes 3 days (day 1 for panels, day 2 for every other panel, and day 3 for stitching).