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Creative Ways to Use Paint in Your Home
Never underestimate the transfomative effect that a fresh coat of paint will have on your interiors. With a little imagination, and a pop of colour, you can create eye-catching effects that will enhance the style and character of your home. With such a broad spectrum of colours and variety of finishes on the market, paint is no longer limited to your walls. From ceilings to fireplaces, furniture to floors, we’ve gathered our favourite creative ways to use paint in your home, to get your creativity flowing.
It is often too tempting to paint your walls a single colour, and add texture and depth through home accessories and patterned wallpaper. While this is not a poor decision, we know that paint can offer you walls so much more!
Using painters tape and a mixture of colours, you can quite quickly create bold and original wall art in your home. Alternatively painting alcoves, door frames and/or skirting boards will help to integrate them into your colour scheme. With a bit of careful planning ahead of decorating your room, you can choose your furnishings and fixtures to complement your chosen design.
From ultra contemporary to brilliantly eclectic, painted walls can create impressive features in every different style of home, as you can see in the roomsets below.
Paint for Kids’ Rooms
Getting creative with paint will please children and teenagers alike, and will allow you to design a personal space that reflects their growing personalities. A great excuse to be bolder than you normally would, a good place to start is with their favourite colour.
We particularly love the clever use of paint in this twin bedroom below. By fashioning headboards behind each bed, the wall paint has effectively created two individual zones for each child to call their own. A simple idea that works far beyond the walls, this straightforward wall art is something you could easily recreate at home.
However if you want to add colour through your furnishings whilst keeping the rest of your walls white, our Intelligent Paint finishes are designed for cupboards, bookshelves, cots and toys. Certified ‘Child-Safe’ as they don’t contain any dangerous ingredients, their innovative formulations mean painted walls and woodwork can easily be washed clean with soapy water without leaving a mark.
Ceiling Paint
Why do walls get all the love? We are very pleased to see that painted ceilings are enjoying a resurgence! A clever design trick that is low cost, but high impact, adding colour above can completely alter the atmosphere and dimensions of a room.
If you are struggling to make a long, narrow room feel more cosy, then opting for a dark, matte paint will seamlessly join the walls and ceiling to create a more intimate space as seen below. At the opposite end of the spectrum, painting your ceiling with a lighter colour will force your eyes to look upwards, giving the sense of extra height in the room.
Choosing a paint to complement your wallpaper is another simple way to create a room that looks beautifully unified. We love this brave example featuring Dorchester Pink which can be seen in the bluebells below. Alternatively, applying a brighter paint across both walls and ceiling will maximise the light and bathe your room in a sunshine glow!
Creative Painting
In Occupational Therapy interventions, OTs and OTAs love to support their clients through creative outlets, specifically those that are meaningful to the client. For some children, art and painting is just that: a tool that inspires movement, sensory challenges, visual motor integration, crossing midline and more. OTs can use creative painting as a motivating strategy to develop skills…and maybe add in a bit of creative expression at the same time! Some of these are sensory paint ideas but most involve problem solving and creativity expression through creative paint!
- Fine motor skills
- Gross motor skills
- Crossing midline
- Problem solving
- Executive functioning skills
- Motor planning
- Tactile exploration
- Sensory experiences
- Bilateral coordination
- MORE!
Creative Painting materials
The ideas listed below will get your creative juices flowing for your next paint project. Kids love when a creative painting idea is presented to them because it’s a bit of the unexpected! Out-of the box thinking when it comes to painting ideas is part of the magic.
Gather some of these materials for your next painting adventure:
- Paints– tin of watercolors, washable paints, acrylics, finger-paints, etc.
- Painting surfaces– canvas, cardboard box, paper, newspaper, paper towel, clothing, paper plates, styrofoam, bubble wrap, piece of paper, watercolor paper, etc.
- Sensory mediums to mix paint into– shaving cream, sand, salt, dough, bubbles, etc.
- Tools to paint with– brushes, paintbrushes, rolling pin, flowers, feathers, forks, ice, crayons, cotton swabs, pencils erasers, etc. You can even go on a nature walk to gather items to use to paint with.
This list is just a starting point…the creative ways to paint is literally in your imagination. Take these ideas and run with them to make your next creative painting masterpiece.
The Mess of Creative Painting
It can be common to immediately think about the mess involved with all of this creative art making, however there is therapeutic benefit as well, and focusing on those aspects can help with the mess issue.
Plus, the clean up portion of painting is a great time to work on those OT self-care goals that aren’t some of the more fun parts of childhood:
- hand washing – a paint activity is great motivation for washing little hands!
- cleaning the body
- scrubbing hard enough to remove the paint
- cleaning up one’s surroundings
- wiping down a table
- cleaning out a sink
- washing paintbrushes
- drying a table
Creative Painting Techniques
Break out the paints and lay out the plastic mat, your little ones are becoming artists! These creative painting techniques are fun for them and can make some beautiful artwork! Let them press, pour, or brush the paint. However they create, they are learning. Sure, painting with little ones can be stressful for some adults. We get it. It’s going to be messy. But it’s going to be worth it!
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Check out our most popular art projects:
These creative painting techniques are fun and unique ways to paint with kids. Break out the paint and see what you’re kids will create!
Pour Painting Art Projects for kids and beginners
Itching for more art projects for kids? Check out this collection that will surely inspire!
Shopping for that artistic kiddo? Get a gift as creative as they are!
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