A fresh coat of paint is a great way to protect your home’s exterior from harsh weather and keep it sealed from moisture, but beyond that it’s a fun way to express yourself with color. Do you want your house to make a statement? There’s a bold color palette for that. Would you rather your home blended inconspicuously into the scenery? There’s a color palette to perfectly match the surrounding nature. Are you getting ready to put your house on the market? The right color scheme can create a stunning first impression and boost your home’s the curb appeal. The colors of your home’s exterior set the tone for your entire property, and color selection is a big decision. However, instead of getting overwhelmed by the color selection process, use our tips and let it be fun!

Find The Right Color For Your Home

Paint is available in every color of the spectrum. However, randomly picking 2-4 of your favorite colors will not automatically result in an optimal color scheme for your house. Do some research, take note of your home’s surroundings, and play with your color options. Here’s how:

Step 1: Setting

• Take a walk around the neighborhood to get an idea of the colors used in the area. Make an effort to match your own paint color scheme to the neighborhood. While you don’t want to use the same exact colors, or even the same color scheme as your next-door neighbors, you also don’t want to choose colors that will clash with their houses. Create variance, but in a way that thoughtfully matches the feel of the street, block, or community.

• Take note of the surrounding nature. Do you have landscaping that includes flowering shrubs or fruit trees? Choose colors that will be enhanced by your yard and landscaping. Is your house deeply shaded by large oak trees? Or do you have an oceanfront home with nothing but sand and sun for miles? Consider how sunlight and shade affect the exterior of your house and choose your colors accordingly.

Step 2: Structure

• Consider the unchangeable elements of your home, including roof shingles, brick accents, a stone chimney, or a cinder block foundation. Find a color that will go well with the elements of your house that you can’t change. This can be easier than it sounds! For example, charcoal gray roof tiles may still have flecks of green, gold, or brown that you can identify and use as an exterior paint color.

• Investigate the history of your home. Owners of historic homes love to research historically accurate color schemes to apply to their homes. The famous “Painted Ladies” of the Victorian era often incorporated 5 or 6 colors into a scheme, whereas Colonial era homes seldom used more than 2 colors. The owners of Craftsman-style bungalows often want to bring in earth tones, while the owners of beach houses go for brighter and lighter tones. Delve into your home’s history and find inspiration!

Step 3: Color

• Collect paint swatches and color cards from your local paint store. While you’re there, don’t be afraid to ask the experts for their input! Many paint supply stores and hardware stores have color consultants on hand, so take advantage of their expertise.

• Reference color scheme materials. Almost all paint manufacturers have compiled hundreds of complete color schemes to take the guesswork out of the process. Color schemes will even be given names such as “Beaches Palette” or “Williamsburg Palette” to hint at the influences behind their design.

• Try several paint colors on the house itself. Buy a quart of each of the colors you are considering, and for fun get samples of a few extra colors. Apply the paint to an area of your house and examine the colors for several days. Look at the colors in the morning light versus evening light, and in the bright sun as well as the shade. Get to know each color over the course of a week or so before deciding on the right one for your house.

Finding the right colors for your home is exciting! It’s fun to imagine what your home will look like in a bold, new palette, or even in a fresh coat of a similar color. If the prospect of selecting the perfect paint seems too daunting, however, ask your local professional painting company for advice. A great house painter is not just a technician, but also an artist, and will have the industry knowledge and experience to guide you in your color selection.

The Best Jacksonville FL Exterior Painting Contractors

Ready to paint your home’s exterior? The Painting Craftsmen is the best professional painting company in Jacksonville FL, specializing in both interior painting and exterior painting. Our painting contractors are skilled masters who will transform your home’s exterior using extraordinary skill, expert training, and an eye for detail. We offer color consultation as well, so if you are at a standstill and can’t decide on the right color for your house, call on us! Beautiful oceanfront homes along Atlantic Beach, Jacksonville Beach, and Ponte Vedra Beach, as well as countless historic homes in Riverside Avondale, San Marco, and downtown Jacksonville have been revitalized by our painting craftsmen. We’re the best professional painting contractors in town, and the right choice for your home.

The post Tips For Choosing The Best Exterior House Paint Color first appeared on The Painting Craftsmen.

Faux painting is an artisan technique used to give your walls a unique look and feel. Homeowners love to incorporate faux finishing in their homes for several reasons. First and foremost, faux finish techniques can imitate the look of aged or distressed walls, and therefore give your home the same old-world character of a Tuscan villa or French mansion of the distant past. Secondly, faux finishing can be used to disguise one surface as another, thus turning a plaster pillar in your home into one that looks like it is made of pure marble or granite. Lastly, many homeowners like faux finish application for its ability to incorporate multiple hues and tones to create a completely customized color for their favorite room. If you are dreaming of a unique and artisan look for a room or wall or architectural feature in your home, faux painting can help that dream come true!

Popular Faux Painting Techniques

Here are some of the most popular techniques used to apply a faux finish.

• Color Washing: As the term implies, the color wash technique is performed by washing one paint color over another color to give the effect of multiple layers of color. This faux finish mimics the imperfect plaster painted walls of decades past, and is an excellent way to create a complex and unique wall color.
• Dry Brushing: The dry brush technique gives walls a softly textured look by lightly brushing one color over an existing base color. Rather than being loaded with paint, the paint brush bristles are left mostly dry, and the faint lines provided by the brush allow multiple hues to show through.
• Fresco: This style of faux painting gives your walls a mottled or parchment look. This technique is especially desirable in Mediterranean-style homes, as it perfectly captures the frescoed plaster walls of centuries-old villas and palaces.
• Graduated Painting: The graduate painting technique moves from one paint color to another by softly blending them. Typically, one paint color is chosen for the lower wall, and a second similar color is chosen for the upper portion of the wall, and the two colors are blended along the middle of the wall.
• Strié: Before the rollers and the smooth latex paints of today, paint was a thick emulsion that was slathered onto walls with coarse brushes. Bristle marks from the brushes would appear in the thick paint, and over the years dirt and dust would collect in the grooves. Strié technique gives this effect, but rather than using thick paint and waiting for dust to collect over the ages, it reaches a similar effect through a complicated process of layering multiple glazes.

Faux finish can be used to transform an entire room, enhance an accent wall, or animate a unique architectural feature in your home. Indeed, for any area of your house, there is a faux finish technique to make it beautifully unique! The downside to faux painting is that in order for it to look good, you have to know what you are doing. You need to invest in specific tools, paints, and materials, and the cost can add up quickly. More importantly, you need to have the specific skills for the job. There are countless books and websites you can consult, and DIY television shows that will encourage you to attempt the job yourself. Unfortunately, many of the faux finish techniques require practice to make them look good, and busy homeowners who cannot make the time commitment end up disappointed in their own work. The bottom line is that faux finish techniques are beautiful, but it’s best to hire a good professional painting company to do the job!

Jacksonville FL Faux Finish Experts

Among the multitude of Jacksonville FL painting services, The Painting Craftsmen set ourselves apart in our devotion to the craft of painting. We excel in each type of faux painting, and would love to apply a fresco finish to your villa-style home in San Marco, or color wash a room in your historic Riverside Avondale home. Homeowners throughout Northeast Florida, including Atlantic Beach, Ponte Vedra Beach, and the greater Jacksonville area trust us with their artisan painting projects, and call us for all of their painting needs. Choose the perfect faux finish for your own room, and let us create it for you!

The post Faux Painting Techniques & What They’ll Look Like On Your Walls first appeared on The Painting Craftsmen.

The Techniques That Keep Homes Looking Their Best

When wanting to make your home look its best or when wanting to refresh its appearance there are a variety of things you can do. Repainting interior walls and trim are popular to freshen things up a bit. Other things you can do to give your home’s interior a facelift are:

• Custom Wallpaper

• Cabinets refinishing

• Repair textured ceiling damage

• Faux finishing

The Painting Craftsmen proudly provides each of these services as well as pressure washing and other exterior services. By paying strict attention to detail, providing expert craftsmanship, and using high quality materials, our company has earned a stellar reputation.

Are You Sure You’re Ready for a DIY Project?

When approaching painting or any type of home maintenance projects, many homeowners try to take the DIY approach. However, when it comes to painting a home, hiring a professional is the way to go. There is a lot of hard work involved in painting that many homeowners find to be over their heads. Along with choosing the right products and using the right techniques, there is the agony of the labor and clean up after a day’s work. The expenses of a painting DIY project can add up quickly between the costs of paint brushes, rollers, roller covers, drop cloths, tape, caulk, caulk gun, primers, etc. Many homeowners find themselves spending lots of money on all of the necessary products and only using them once.

Hiring a Professional Painting Service Ensures a Job Well Done

Professional painters have unique skills and knowledge of the painting techniques that are used to create sheer perfection. Time is something few people have to spare and by hiring professional painting services, Jacksonville, FL residents can quickly have a beautifully painted home in no time.

You Need an Experienced Professional

Some homeowners have found out the hard way that by using improper techniques and the use of either too much or too little paint can lead to a poor looking paint job. This is true whether painting the interior or exterior of a home. Interior walls can actually show imperfections even worse than exterior walls. This is because we are closer to them and see them constantly. Hiring a professional painter can eliminate the risks of painting flaws that will be seen daily.

Homeowners Need a Company That Does it All

When seeking out professional painting services, Jacksonville residents should always search for one that has an excellent reputation. It is also wise to hire a service that offers a wide range of both interior and exterior painting and refinishing services. A service that provides numerous interior services such as wallpaper removal, faux finishes, cabinet refinishing, and textured ceiling repair as well as painting and custom wallpaper hanging can offer more ideas. Such a service can offer suggestions and knowledge of all of the latest trends in interior painting and colors.

Bringing Your Expectations to Life

A home is a person’s own private little world. It is a place where they can express their personalities through color, textures, and designs. When it comes to the interior of a home, a professional painter can help your visions come true. Through the use of high quality paints and wallpapers, skill and experience, the inside of a home can be transformed to meet all of homeowner’s expectations.

Techniques such as faux finishes are used to make surfaces look any way you desire, from antique to surreal. The possibilities are endless.  Re-painting and wallpapering walls can make homeowners feel they have an entirely new house. Great pride is taken to keep Jacksonville homes updated with modern designs and colors. The Painting Craftsmen offer the kind of professional painting services Jacksonville homeowners can feel proud of.

Make Your House a Home 

Whether wanting to recondition or restore a historical home or wanting to put a modern flair into your interior design, it is always best to leave this job up to a professional painting service. When looking at the client reviews of The Painting Craftsmen, it is easy to see why so many people call for a free in home estimate. Professionalism, artistic and unique painting skills, combined with affordability and guaranteed work makes this painting service a notch above the rest.

If the inside or exterior of your home has become boring and bland, contact the best of the best professional painting services Jacksonville has to offer. Our professional painters can paint the way for you making your house a home.

The post Why You Should Hire A Professional Painter first appeared on The Painting Craftsmen.