When we first moved into our house, the first thing you would notice when you walked in the door was a huge blue accent wall with a faux Venetian plaster wallpaper on it. It really made a cool statement and always got us a lot of complements.

…so I changed it. Ha!

Well, I am really just not a blue wall kind of girl. I like to decorate in neutrals… browns, tans, grays, white, black. For my color pops in my main living area, I normally like muted greens and burgundies. The blue had to go. That, and we had a HOLE in that wall anyway. Not good.

The hole worked to my advantage, though, because obviously when we repaired it, we had to change the whole wall anyway.

How did I pick the paint color, you ask? Well. When we moved in, we painted all of the open area of our home (entryway, living room, dining room, kitchen) in Behr’s lovely “Sand Motif”. I wanted this accent wall to be an exact complement of that color. So I went to Behr.com and used their Color Smart program to pick one of their recommended colors to accentuate our Sand Motif. I came up with “Macchiato.”

So, I went to town painting the wall the Macchiato color. Aaaaand when I was done… I kind of missed the blue Venetian plaster wall!

Well, not the blue part of it, but the pretty Venetian-plaster effect.

I Googled “How to Venetian Plaster”. Yeah, I was so not going to do that on such a hugely tall wall. So then I just Googled “Paint Effects” and came across one I really liked that seemed simple enough — rag painting! Here’s a detailed how-to: How to Rag Paint a Wall.

And, here’s what I got:

It’s a really pretty effect and now this wall makes a big statement! I used the darker Macchiato as the base color and the light Sand Motif as the glazed accent color. Yup, completely backwards from what is recommended. That is only because, as you recall, I had already painted the stinkin’ dark color on the wall before I realized I wanted to do any kind of effect to it. And, I was not about to make this already-dark color appear even darker. Oh well, I still really LOVE how it turned out!

This technique is really pretty easy. I just used a damp old tee shirt and bunched it up a different way each time, dabbed it in the glaze-paint mixture and then pressed it onto the wall. And did that about 500 times. :)

Here’s the wall more close up.

And here’s some further details on my living room accessories:

1. The white wall shelf was already here when we moved in. I like it here because it is my pretend “mantel” that I can decorate and create a focal point on this large wall.

2. The round metal green wall hanging is a score from Kirkland’s. I had been shopping for a gift there and had a $10 off coupon. This piece happened to be marked down to $10 because it had some areas where the dark paint had been scratched off on the metal. Completely easy fix — I just colored those parts in with a black Sharpie and no one would ever know. [Until now as I post it on the Internet. :)]

3. The glass items on the right side of the pic are just some random glasses we’ve gotten at various places. They were taking up too much space in my kitchen cabinets so I threw some potpourri in them and now they look pretty on display!

4. The glass mosaic vase on the left I got from Pier 1 probably 10 years ago.

5. And the cross is our unity piece from our wedding. Love it so much and I love having it displayed here in the center of our home where it belongs. Here’s some more information on that if you’re interested: http://shopinspiration.com/

6. My curtains are ones I got from TJ Maxx about a year ago. They ended up being too short since we have thick molding surrounding our windows. So I got some fabric from Joann’s and lengthened them myself. It was a pretty easy DIY project and I’ll do a separate post on those one day soon with a how-to.

What do you think? Would you ever consider painting an accent wall in your home? How about trying a paint effect? If you’re nervous to try it, don’t worry – it’s totally easy! Any “mess-ups” you think you make actually just contribute to the cool overall look. And if you decide you really hate it, you can just paint back over it again!

 

I’m linking this post up to these great link parties:
Between Naps on the Porch | I Should Be Mopping the Floor | Power of Paint