Neutral walls help sell homes, but when you get the keys to the house, a big decision is what to do with the walls.
Some homeowners simply choose to hang family photos, artwork and other decorative items on walls already painted cream, beige or other bland hues. Or others may spend hours, days and even weeks researching and deliberating on paint colors for each room.
Often, homeowners only consider hanging mirrors or artwork, whether prints or oil paintings, on walls, said interior designer Linda Castle of Decorated Designs, based in Kennesaw. Instead, if you stretch your imagination and decide to make the actual wall the decor, there are many exciting options, she said.
“Doing something interesting with walls opens up the floodgates for decorating,” Castle said.
Some designers and homeowners are using different techniques and taking advantage of more options to create walls that make a statement in homes.
Treating tile differently
Tile can make bathrooms and kitchens stand out, but tile also can be used on walls in other areas of the home. Walls often are a missed opportunity for homeowners, who might be more focused on floors and countertops, said Rick Goldstein, a registered architect and principal of MOSAIC Group (Architects and Remodelers). He’s seeing more products for walls with 3-D and other interesting patterns, including drywall panels that add an architectural element.
Adding tile to a featured wall in a room, such as the bedroom, can add texture in unexpected places. In a renovated Buckhead home with contemporary interior design, MOSAIC Group installed large tiles (from Atlanta’s MODA Floors and Interiors) with a wavy pattern in a master bedroom, which helps connect the bedroom to the pool.
Adding LED lighting creates shadow lines on the tile, which disappear when the lights are off.
“We knew it was going to be an interesting look but only if it was lit properly,” Goldstein said. “If there’s not the right lighting on the tile, it just fades away and looks no different than a backsplash.”
Playing up paneling
From intown bungalows to single-family homes in cities such as Brookhaven to lakefront homes, some homeowners are embracing paneling that may have been ripped off walls in the past.
A home in Lake Allatoona that was built for Turner Broadcasting Systems in the early 2000s for TV shows such as the “Man Made Movie” started off as a “guy pad” with an indoor saloon and bowling alley. The 4,000-square-foot-plus home was transformed into a family lake house when Alan Schlact purchased it in 2005, with renovations to the roof, siding, windows, moldings and layout. Some of the walls in the Woodstock home, listed for $675,000, have painted tongue-and-groove, which fit into the rustic look of the beamed great room.
Wainscoting is a “timeless treatment” for lining walls with material, Castle said. Wainscot often was wood paneling used primarily in the past to protect against dampness and moisture. Now, wainscoting has expanded to include many materials, such as bead board, tongue-and-groove and raised panels, and is usually on the lower portion of the wall. She adds that wallpaper, tile or other hard surfaces also can be used, and often the wainscot treatment is capped with a chair rail and painting the upper portion of the drywall.
Decisions about the walls should be part of the planning process, before construction begins. Homeowners will need to consider the type of lighting that will be needed to highlight the walls and how the wall surface may integrate with other materials, products and colors in the rooms, Goldstein said.
Welcoming back wallpaper?
Wallpaper is another way that designers and homeowners are adding more interest to walls. Grass cloth is making a comeback, and the selection of textured papers is increasing, designers say.
Grass cloth adds texture and can be used in traditional or modern homes, said Jack Poles, owner of Wallpaper Your World in Snellville.
Even in small spaces, such as a powder room, the walls don’t have to be ignored. During the Atlanta Symphony Associates’ 2013 Decorators Show House and Gardens, powder rooms by Atlanta-based Insidesign used everything from leather to applying items such as painted vines to the walls.
“Powder rooms are especially a place where people can go completely outside of the box,” said Jenny Parker, a kitchen and bath designer with Insidesign.
As people walked by the powder room designed by Parker, many stopped to touch the leather-looking walls, which had vinyl wallpaper in an oxblood hue, framed in wood trim.
“I loved the texture of it. It wasn’t just a wallpaper that was flat. It had some dimension to it. They wanted to see it and touch it,” she said.
Wallpaper also has become easier to hang and remove, say advocates such as Poles. It’s not the frustrating process that your mother or grandmother experienced years ago, and wallpaper is no longer being applied to bare Sheetrock that made it difficult to remove, he said. As a result, even apartment dwellers can use wallpaper since the glue is no longer on the walls permanently.
More options for walls
Stone and brick also add warmth to uninteresting walls, as well as faux finishes of all types, including simple faux murals, and textures such as Venetian plaster and stucco, Castle said.
In the basement of an Atlanta home, MOSAIC Group added stone to an entire wall leading to a wine cellar. The stone made the home appear that it was built in the 1800s instead of the 1990s.
Even builders are making walls focal points, by adding in niches and built-in bookshelves to set homes apart from others.
“A lot of times, you have wasted space where with a little bit of planning you can put something that is a real benefit to the homeowner,” builder Dan O’Dwyer said.
A model home by O’Dwyer Homes in Westbrook, a Forsyth County community, has a bookshelf carved out of the staircase and a niche set into the wall where the fireplace is located.
“They’re great areas for knickknacks or books or photographs,” he said. “We call them memory points.”
