Paint
For the floors, they sourced tinted concrete tiles from Mexico in Hawkins’s signature palette of pinks, blue-grays, and creams. Friends came over to help lay the tiles in a random pattern, and they intentionally skipped grouting so that the edges would wear over time. “In the process of restoring the original doors, we fell in love with the years of layered paint, so we left them that way,” says Blaine. Other details, such as copper electrical tape around the perimeter of the kitchen walls, pair a DIY approach with a love of lived-in patinas.
“At one point, the family had a ladybug infestation in the attic space, so we took that as our cue to do a custom wall painting in the bathroom,” says the designer. “Artist Julie Rodgers painted them and she’s our go-to gal. She does mural art, custom lampshades and more.” Light Fixtures: Cedar & Moss. Shower Curtain: Custom.
What’s on the walls: Quite literally, Farrow & Ball’s Sulking Room Pink. I’ve drenched the room in the shade, including the trim, ceiling, windowsill, built-in shelves—and even painted a planter that color. It feels cavernous yet soothing, and I love how it changes with the light throughout the day.
If you're craving a bit of Old World charm in your space, Roman Clay offers an earthy, plaster-like finish that brings gorgeous texture to your walls. It produces a mottled matte look that's very similar to limewash, but it's applied with a putty knife instead of a paintbrush. While you can certainly clad an entire room with it, we love the visual interest it brings to a built-in shelving area. Here, we've applied it to an arched wall niche — shelves and all — opting for a warm beige tone to contrast with the surrounding wall color. The result is the perfectly imperfect look of old stone that has aged over time, but really only took a day to do.
There’s nothing wrong with a cheery front hall, but I’ve always liked the unexpected.” Which explains the sludge-green that interior designer Courtnay Daniels painted across the entrance hall of the Manhattan apartment she shares with her husband, AD100 architect Gil Schafer. Yes, sludge-green, the same murky shade associated with poorly maintained goldfish bowls. Here the color was purposefully applied, wiped off, and polished with wax, over and over again over more than three weeks, resulting in a subtly swirling finish made up of “so many layers that I’ve lost count,” Daniels admits, adding that the laborious technique “gives a depth that you couldn’t get with mirrored lacquer.”
Becca stood her ground when the designer kept adding upper cabinets to the sketch—she had other plans for the blank wall. Specifically, a Calacatta Viola marble countertop and backsplash with a matching shelf. “I had seen a picture of a kitchen with that stone on the baseboards and the door frame,” she remembers “I fell in love. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. The cabinet company tried to talk me out of the ledge, saying it wasn’t really practical. And I was like, well, that’s not really the point. I don’t plan to store things on it; I just want it to be beautiful.” It was her biggest splurge. To balance out the expense, Becca covered the rest of the walls in a warm gray-white limewash, which she applied herself.
For laminate or previously painted cabinets: Sherwin-Williams Extreme Bond For unfinished wood cabinets: Sherwin-Williams Premium Wall and Wood Primer For veneer cabinets: Zinsser Bulls Eye 1 2 3 For an oil-based look: Portola Hybrid Primer For hard-to-coat surfaces: Insl-X Stix Waterborne Bonding Primer For dark colors: Farrow & Ball Interior Wood Primer & Undercoat The Best Finishes Some surfaces, like laminate and veneer, aren’t really meant to be painted, but Jamie Davis, cofounder of Portola Paints, has hope: “I have used our Hybrid system in my kitchen over existing laminate cabinet fronts and have had great results. They might not last as long or be as durable, but I was able to completely transform my space. I sanded and primed prior to applying two coats of our Satin Enamel.” For laminate and veneer: Portola Satin Enamel For easy cleanup: Sherwin-Williams Emerald Urethane Trim Enamel For a smooth finish: Benjamin Moore Advance For quick drying: Insl-X Cabinet Coat For eco-friendliness: Farrow & Ball Modern Eggshell For high drama: Farrow & Ball Full Gloss
Paintable: Metal switch plates can easily be primed and painted to match your walls.
“It’s a shade of white, but it has green undertones,
White. Black. wood lighting and windows
Achieve trendy textured walls with tadelakt—traditional plaster’s cooler cousin. The Moroccan finish is a combination of lime plaster and black soap made from olives and is totally waterproof, making it perfect for the inside of showers and tubs. It creates a smooth, continuous surface, so if you are anti-grout (sorry, Justina), this should be your go-to.
Inside and out, the designer covered walls not in paint but in different colors of limewash by Domingue. “The fact that it’s all natural and nontoxic is a bonus,” says McKinley of the easy-to-apply technique. Even better: It’s super-affordable and creates beautiful depth and patina. A volcanic dark gray shade coats the exterior, inspired by Italy’s Mount Etna, which the property’s street is named after. “It looks pretty monolithic and will weather really beautifully,” he notes. The interior is almost entirely washed in a luminous white, save for a blue-gray guest room that mirrors the ocean’s seafoam hue.
Inside and out, the designer covered walls not in paint but in different colors of limewash by Domingue. “The fact that it’s all natural and nontoxic is a bonus,” says McKinley of the easy-to-apply technique. Even better: It’s super-affordable and creates beautiful depth and patina. A volcanic dark gray shade coats the exterior, inspired by Italy’s Mount Etna, which the property’s street is named after. “It looks pretty monolithic and will weather really beautifully,” he notes. The interior is almost entirely washed in a luminous white, save for a blue-gray guest room that mirrors the ocean’s seafoam hue.
surecrete
Adding an insert electric fireplace got rid of any lingering garage vibes. Brownell made the Art Deco–inspired facade out of PVC pipes she picked up for $50. Once the tubes were cut down to the right size, she attached them together with heavy-duty construction adhesive and lined the seams with white caulk. The 4-inch-deep mantel is plywood covered in plaster. “I was not going to pay thousands of dollars for a marble surround for a plug-in fireplace in a garage,” says the designer. The experiment with the basic plumbing fixtures paid off in the end, even though it cost next to nothing.
Fixing the slightly crooked baseboards was a non-priority for Brownell (it’s a garage at its core, after all), but she did spruce up the white walls with Portola Paint’s Roman Clay treatment, an eco-friendly plaster finish. She only covered half of each surface, mainly because the process is time-consuming (it required two coats), although the design ended up adding some visual interest to the airy space. Her only regret is not using a plastic putty knife to apply the stucco-like material from the get-go. “When a metal tool touches the light-colored paint, you start to see gray streaks when you smooth it out,” she recalls.
Nitty Gritty by Portola Paints If you want to add some interesting texture to your space, start small and go for a powder room or a child’s bedroom with this amazing blue-green plaster clay specialty paint.
In keeping with Tedhams’s reliance on a limited palette, the kitchen cabinets are painted the same color as the exterior of the house. Countertops are Belgian bluestone. Range by Wolf; dishwasher by Fisher & Paykel.
Paying homage to the 1926 building it occupies, Oliver Haslegrave and his New York-based firm, Home Studios, infused Gwen’s interior with Old Hollywood drama: tiered crystal chandeliers, lush velvet and rattan banquettes, and custom mouth-blown pendant lights. As a nod to Gwen’s meat-focused menu, Haslegrave also made reference to “the elegance and rituals of traditional butcher shops in Europe,” he says, by installing a traditional Asador-style hearth at the center of the dining room and pairing it with a lustrous copper firescreen. 6600 Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90028
“It was a tired room with old white paint throughout, so as a facelift—due to limitations on being able to do major improvements—I chose a dark, moody color since it’s the one room in my place where I had the chance to do that look,” Lauren says of transforming her kitchen with Benjamin Moore's Galápagos Green paint. She also painted over the original patterned laminate countertop with a glossy cream paint.Sylvie Li
6. Paint. By painting your walls, baseboards and ceilings the same color, you blur the lines of where your walls end and where your ceilings begin. If you think your wall color is too dark for the ceiling, then dilute the wall color with 50 percent white and try that on the ceiling instead.
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