Has anybody painted murals in bedroom?

[Nightblue]

Hey guys,

I might be getting a commission to do a mural in a kid's bedroom. I have painted murals on large boards coated with paper using acrylic, but I have never painted on actual walls before.

What kind of paint should I use? I need something that does not peel or fade right off, not super expensive, non-toxic and preferably not a lot of odor. Thanks in advance!

NB

[Jason Rainville]

Human blood. Kids love that stuff.

(sorry for being neither helpful nor funny)

[Nightblue]

Human blood. Kids love that stuff.

I called all the Home Depot in my city and they don't carry that stuff :( Since cow blood stinks to high heaven, we'll have to think of something else.

[Justice Von Brandt]

I never have but wouldn't any kind of acrylic paint work just fine?

I want to paint my own walls, but I can't come to terms what I really would want on them.

[Kamikazebob]

I did a section of the basement of a friends in acrylics painted directly on to a white base coat on drywall. It soaks in *FAST* like 2 mins until its fully soaked in. I was nice when working with one or two colors but it is, or was for me, very hard to match colors for a decent blending. Turned out nice in the end but probably took 2 or 3 times longer than we thought.
So yeah, acrylics would work, I'd test them on a chunk of extra drywall to get the feel for 'em, if its on drywall that is. The color deadened a bit more than I thought it would to, once it was dry.

[arttorney]

Acrylics is probably the way to go, or maybe tempera (which I think is much more likely to crack). You should see Gilead's sketchbook and maybe shoot him a PM. He recently did a kid's bedroom mural job and he's painted on a lot of different surfaces before.

[Justin.]

the CA member Gilead has. that's all I know.

[Nightblue]

Great! Thanks for all your help, you people are awesome! I will probably end up using acrylic, just wanted to make sure it worked so I don't screw up completely.

One can totally over-think things, lol.

[kingshaj]

i have done quite a few

as has been said acrylic is fine ...but because you ( i assume) would like to make a profit primed painted walls are better..you will use a fraction of the paint...and the colors would be more brilliant and be less susceptible to damage (its a kids room right?)

i do however recommend that you gently sand the area first to get a subtle tooth to the surface (especially if it is "washable latex paint"
dont break your arm sanding, but provide just enough tooth to make the surface the slightest bit porous so the kid wont just peal the mural off or be tempted to pick at it.



hope this helps

[Flake]

Acrylic all the way.
Dries fast, not toxic unless they peel it off and eat it.

If (when?) you make a mistake you can paint right over it in 20 minutes.

It's a mural for a kids room so the subtle blending properties of oils are likely not required.

If you're working on wallpaper, the housepaint likely already on it is not that far from regular acrylic primer. Straight plaster or brick, no idea, pm Gilead.

Edit: By acrylics I mean the cheap stuff that comes in big tubes for 2 quid, not artists grade, should've been clearer about that.

[Ilaekae]

Whatever you do, don't use oils or lacquer-based paints. They seal the plaster up and cause it to rot (see Da Vinci's Last Supper)...

One suggestion would be to (if it's a single smallish wall) gesso a single piece of fabric large enough to cover the wall (thin canvas or even a top grade bed sheet material stretch on a rough temporary stretcher set up and use acrylics. The sheet is accurately trimmed and mounted with wallpaper paste just like wallpaper. One advantage is, they can peel it off if they move and want to take it with them.

[M.C.Barrett]

Also, be careful of the types of pigments you select. You don't want to be painting a kid's room with cadmium yellow, for instance. Lower-cost brands of paint will generally not contain toxic pigments, but you should check to be sure.

[Mirana]

You don't want to be painting a kid's room with cadmium yellow

LOL! And you'd want to be making a profit! It may be a step down in artistic integrity but do use craft paints or quarts of house paint (for large color coverage) to keep your costs down. Artist's paint is a waste on a kid or average home owner. ;)

[aesir]

why not spray paint?

[kingshaj]

why not spray paint?

that's a very specialized skill and a respirator is a must.....
technically aerosol paint is an enamel so it should work fine with acrylics (for detail over latex without cracking if one works thin with the spray paint...not allowing it to become thick enough to be glossy.

but unless you have superb thin line control with a can ...you will only frustrate yourself. but it can be used for a fade or sky or large color areas
well in conjunction with acrylic for more detailed areas.

[Matt Dixon]

I've done this a few times for my own kids.

I'm with Mirana. I got good results using standard emulsion paint. You can get small tester pots of paint mixed at the DIY store ( a service which I'm assuming isn't exclusive to the UK ). Grab some colour charts, plan your design, then get all the colours you'll need mixed up.

I gave the wall a good white undercoat. Lightly drew the design in wax crayon, applied the emulsion using a sponge from a paint tray, then tidied up and added details / outlines with a small brush.

How practical this is might depend to some degree on the design, but unless you're doing a very small or very detailed design I think you'll find this much more economical than acrylics. You'll have to factor in long drying times where you have to overlap colours though.

[Sorknes]

Yeah, I've made one for my niece. And will prolly do it again soon ;)

I ended up, after checking up on some paint and talking to some people that works with house/wallpaint, to use wallpaint, waterbased, same paint as the walls was originally painted in, and it worked very well for me.

I got white, black, yellow, red and blue half litres of paint. They offered me test cans of paint (for free), but I ended up buying the halflitres. Afterwards I can say that I could probably have gone with the test cans except for the white, blue and yellow. (There was some landscape involved :) ) The paint in question was the kind that's ready to paint over after two hours when doing whole walls, which was pretty spot on for me, that way I could do wet on wet as well as let parts of it dry while working on other parts, and as there were smaller surfaces, the paint dried even faster, I could paint over something 30-40 mins later without really having the stuff underneat shine through.

I bought a large set of supercheap brushes that I could throw away later, and they were enough for the days I worked on it. (I bought like a set with 30 brushes for acrylic paint for basically a dollar, stuff that'll fall apart pretty soon anyway).

Since the paint was the same as the wall was painted in, they don't have to think about it when cleaning the room, and it's as sturdy as the other paint when furniture etc touches the surface, since it's a kids room, they get a lil more wear than other rooms would get. *lol*

The other option that was thought about, was to use acrylic, and use clear varnish for furniture or wood on top of it. The way we ended up doing it made sure that when my niece grows a bit bigger and gets tired of princesses, she can paint over with normal paint, and it won't really show underneat, she doesn't have to scrape the wall, as there's nothing different in the mural from the other walls, no clumps or anything, and surface underneath if painted over doesn't differentiate with the rest. Also, it makes it easier later if she want another mural instead of a one coloured wall, as it'll be no problem to paint over it, then make another mural.

I was thinking about adding more detail with test cans of silver and/or gold, or doing it in acrylics. It ended up being rather ok for a four year old anyway, and the details weren't hard to do at all as long as I started with fresh brushes when I needed.

The wall I painted on was someting wooden underneath though. I think it was particle boards or something else, and it was already painted twice with the wallpaint that already covered the rest of the room. If it's plaster or something else, there's probably another range of stuff available that might be better.

I am thinking, when making my own kids room, that I'll probably end up buying a particle board, masonite or something that's not so thick, and make a border with fine trim, paint it somewhere ELSE than the room in question, and just put it up as a part of the wall, though. There was a kid waiting to get her room back, I worked for several days on it while she was in the guestroom. Wouldn't want her to sleep in the fumes, even if it was waterbased. Also, it was kinda hard when working high up on the wall, as I'm not tall at all, and I think it will be easier for me to take my time with the piece if I'm working on it somewhere else than the room in question.

Wow, this ended up being a long assed post. Hope it helped, if you haven't decided already. *lol*

[kovah]

i painted a mural all round my mums basement, and we used whatever paint was in the house at the time (my dad was a painter and decorator at the time) so there were mixtures of glosses and matts and brick paint and so on etc.

The result was a lovely sort of mish mash of shiney and matt, for instance I did a tiger cub and a monkey - the orange and brown i mixed using the red gloss paint. The result was the 'characters' were sorta shiney in contrast to the matt green of the background.

Possibly not that 'professional' but i liked the effect when i did it.

[Jska]

Just a little tid bit I haven't seen mentioned yet : *if* by chance you wanted to blend out some of your acrylic colors, you can mix a bit of slow-dry medium (a lot of brands make a version, Liquitex even makes a sprayable version) -

Also, you can use glycerine: (some info from this (http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:2aPlsrHfRp4J:www.cartage.org.lb/en/themes/arts/painting/principl-tech/paint-instruct/explor-tech/useful-chem/usefulchem.htm+glycerine+as+a+slow+dry+agent&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=us&client=firefox-a) website)

Glycerine is available in your local drug store. It has the consistency of oil, somewhere between water and honey in viscosity. It is water soluble and takes a long time to dry. I use it primarily to mix with acrylic paints to slow down the drying time. In one case, the paint was still tacky months later. While acrylic paints usually dry within ten minutes, a drop (say, one part glycerine to four parts of acrylic matte medium and two parts paint), will slow down the drying time to about an hour, depending on the thickness of your paint. You can work with acrylics as you would with oils, depending on the amount of glycerine added. Some expressed concern that glycerine would affect the permanence of the finished painting. I discovered that "glyceroids" are an ingredient listed on tubes and bottles of acrylic paints and mediums, and so I feel fairly confident in using it as a medium and slowing agent. Often there is a clear liquid at the top of acrylic paint in the tube or bottle, and I suspect that this is glycerine.

Just an idea, and not too much of a budget killer :)

[JM]

Does anyone have any pictures of murals they've done in their rooms?

[Tony0930]

I have not done a job like that.
But I think for a kid's room, a healthy style and healthy pigments is the point.So are you sure acrylic will be fine??