Giving New Life to Old Wallpaper

Melanie
by Melanie
3 Materials
$3
2 Hours
Easy

The question has been asked on the Home talk forum can you paint wallpaper? Simple answer is yes. I have an accent wall in my bedroom with a wood look. I have had it for several years and love the look but my goal for this year was to update each room in my house. I started with my bedroom. I lightened it up alot, it was dark earth tones before. Instead of getting rid of my accent wall I decided to give it a facelift too.

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So here is the wallpaper behind my bed. I already painted my walls and purchased a new comforter. The wallpaper just doesn't go with my paint color. So it's time for a change.

So to start this project I am using a soft gloss acrylic paint in Porcelain.

This paint is quite thick so I put a small amount in a plastic container and added water to thin it out. You want it to look like milk in texture.

Next you are going to use a wide paint brush. You are going to dip it in the paint and apply it to the wall, going back and forth until there is no more paint on the brush, basically dry brushing.

Here is one section done, as you can see you can still see the texture in the wallpaper. The paint mixed with the wallpaper color creates a bluish tone.

I continued doing the rest of the wallpaper dry brushing on the paint. You can see where I went lighter and darker . This was simply done with my brush.

Next I took the actual paint color used on my walls, it's Rice Terrace by Sherwin Williams. I thinned it out using water and applied using same technique with my brush. This time I only applied to certain areas. I did not do the entire wall. This is to create texture to the wall.

You can see where I added the wall color in the middle of the wall. I continued doing the rest of the wall, adding subtle amounts of the blue.

Next I added a small amount of black acrylic paint to my wall color paint and some water. Again applying with my brush. Layering colors.

Here is some of my grey..

I took a damp clean rag and started to rub it in and remove excess.

I continued doing this to the rest of the wall.

Here you can see the different colors all together.

Next using a white trim paint I painted the sides on either side of the wallpaper.

So here is my wallpaper accent wall complete.

I love how simply using some paint transformed the look of my wallpaper into a more weathered look.

Stay tuned for another part of my bedroom makeover to come!

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