Using Painted Details to Impact the Home (Trompe-L’oeil Meets Impressionism Edition)

If you’ve been following along with us, you know that here at Silk and Sage Design we’re big fans of transforming the feeling of spaces via three-dimensional forms— painted furniture, cabinets, and other decorative accents can utilize color and texture to alter emotions and perceptions within all areas of homes, work spaces, venues, and anywhere we inhabit for parts of the day. Details no matter how large or small truly add special touches to personalize our spaces. We recently had such a pleasure creating hand-painted details around a wallpaper mural in a client’s home, and we think it looks SO GOOD (we’re a bit biased of course!) to have enlivened accents added here. They gave our client a slightly more lived-in and personalized connection to the wallpaper and room itself. We’ll show you what we mean…

Our client had a mural wallpaper installed (panels from ‘Xanadu’ by Iksel x Schumacher, not installed by us) in her dining room. She had decorative trim added around the wallpaper panels to frame them out as their own scene, which we custom painted to emulate a branchy feeling. Different greens were custom painted with wet-blended and dry-brushed techniques, and we were careful to choose greens that would stand out a little but neither be too contrasted from the wallpaper nor blend in too much. Then the extra fun part came… hand-painted branches and leafy sprigs ‘escaping’ from the sides of the wallpaper. The painted framing was key here, as it created a canvas for the wallpaper mural that the new painted details could escape and trail outward from.

We’re always inspired by trompe-l’oeil as a centuries-loved painting style that fools the eye with realistic optical illusions via painted imagery. The wallpaper illustration itself was more ‘impressionist’-meets-watercolor-meets-fresco-style, so we blended all these concepts to come up with the best mimicry of our little hand-painted leaves and branches. Placement of these was key too as we wanted to have the painted details feel balanced but not contrived.

The result feels lively and playful, and exactly what we hoped— some elegantly personalized whimsy for this dining room. Whether we’re working on painted or refinished furniture, walls, or other decorative areas, we prioritize some level of customization so that we achieve connection with our spaces. Of course hand-painted details aren’t for everyone’s tastes, or even for just a specific project… other great ideas for personalizing decorative elements could be simply with color choice alone, or with textural techniques, or with stencils and/or appliques for decorative pops. The options are endless!

If you’re curious about how we can help you personalize your home with painted furniture, cabinets, or other motifs and are in the Austin-area, send us your project details! Visit our ‘Hire Us’ page to submit project inquiries and see some of the work that we do!

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Vintage Collectors' Club Vol. 1: Portrait History is Neat-- Crayon Enlargement Portraits and the Victorian Era