Painting a mural on a wall

While you may assume that painting a mural on a wall is only practical for nurseries or a child’s room, this is not true. Depending on how creative and artistic you are, they are perfect for walls in your bathroom, kitchen, hallways, etc. Even your primary living space that maybe has a short wall would be the perfect place for a life-sized piece of art. If you’re ready to tackle a wall, don’t go into it blindly. The last thing you want to do is eye-ball a mural, unless of course you’re just that good!

• Create a Graph – The easiest way to paint a mural on a wall is to create a graph first. Measures out specific distances across the wall vertically and horizontally and then either thumbtack yarn to create a grid or use a pencil. If you plan on using a pencil, you should be either painting the entire wall or you better have the best quality eraser available to not smudge unpainted parts of the grid when you erase the lines.

• Draw Your Design – Grab a piece of paper or poster board and create the exact same grid on it so there is the same number of squares with a pen and draw your mural on this. You will have a lot more freedom to make errors and start over this way and since you created the lines in pen, you can erase as many times as you need to.

• Transfer to the Wall – Using the squares on the paper as a guide to the squares on the wall, recreate your mural on the wall. You can either just make really light outlines if you’re pretty comfortable with a paint brush or you can go ahead and draw yourself a detailed picture to paint.

• Paint – The last step in creating a mural is to paint. Acrylic paint works best and don’t forget to seal it when it is completely dry. When working with a lot of colors in an area, you may have to let one color dry so your arm or hand doesn’t smudge it.

Murals can either be a quick and simple project that you do over the course of a day or they can be detailed masterpieces that you continuously return to over a long period of time. Either way, they create a really spectacular focal point in any room!