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Question: “How can I fix my faux finish if I don’t like the way it turned out? The rest of the room is beautiful but the swirls and color accumulation near the door is too heavy.”
Have you ever had this happen to you? Finish up your faux finish and then when you look back over it you can see an area that’s a bit more heavy than the others? Ugh…I hate it when that happens! 
The question of how to fix faux finishes is asked by many new – and even some not so new – faux finish painters. It is a problem every faux artist will face and face more than once. We often wonder how the paint got so heavy or swirly in one area and not another…when we think we have applied the technique exactly the same in all areas.
It is a very difficult question to answer in written words. Every faux finish has it’s own variables. The paint used, the glaze used and the application are all variables that can change the answer each time it is asked.
Removing or attempting to repair faux painting can leave a bigger mess than you started with so be careful! But…in an effort to help here are several ideas that you might attempt:
- Painting over the area with base coat and creating the faux finish again.
- Thinning out the base color and trying to lighten the area by “hazing” over with the basecoat color glaze. I’ve talked about this a couple of times. “Frosting” or “hazing” or “smoking” a finish by taking a lighter color (frosting) or a darker color (smoking) or the base color (hazing) and going over the whole surface of the wall again.
- Painting a vine, or geometric design or other art work over the “boo boo”, to cover up the offending area. We always attempt to make mistakes look intentional. Besides…it’s “ART WORK” so there really are NO real mistakes, right?
We’ve tried them all with some success…Sometimes if you catch a heavy “spot” or section right away you can simply take a damp rag/cloth and gently wipe the area…smoothing out the heavy area. Don’t rub tooooo hard or you’ll go right down to the “white”! That’s even worse!
Here…we found a video, that explains the basics of how to repair faux painting pretty well. Watch and learn how to remove, repair and lighten a faux finishing mistake.
And…if you keep watching…after short pauses or breaks you can see the whole series on faux finishing. They’re pretty good. A little tooooo broken up for me, but that just means you can jump around easily, right?
As for fixing a faux finish…try these techniques for repairing your faux finishes and you will find great success. It’s all about using a light touch! Don’t be heavy handed! Easy does it.
