A Trompe L’Oeil question! You remember… it means “fool the eye” in French. It has been a very long time, these questions are so rare. It is difficult to teach this elevated art style with the written word.
Read on… and let me know if you think I helped or confused!
Hello, I must start by saying that I love to faux paint but NEVER get the results I want. I guess my colors are all wrong. My question today is, I would like to create a Faux tray ceiling in my dining room using paint. The room is pretty square 12×13 and is finished with crown molding. If I make a stripe a darker color around the edge of the ceiling about 4 inches wide and of course round off the corners, and then make a smaller stripe about 2 inches wide around the edge of that, and then paint the interior part of the ceiling an even lighter color, will I get the effect of a tray ceiling? Or a huge mess as usual? It is a very dimly lit room with a Caribbean feel ceiling fan that takes up a lot of the center. I am hoping between the dim light and huge fan, it will help hide any flaws. Thanks! Tracee
Okay… Tracee, let’s see if I can help you out.
- This technique is about measuring and angles.
- Color variations also play a huge part in getting this look.
- Creating a realistic tray ceiling will be easy, but will only fool the viewer for several seconds. That is a fact because you are painting on a flat surface.
I am including a quick sketch to help you visualize.
The center mark is your ceiling fan and the angles are all based on the measurement between your ceiling fan (center of the room) and the corners of the ceiling. The color you choose for your “tray” area ( what would be the more vertical part of the ceiling if it were a tray) is painting in a darker shade than the actual ceiling and crown molding color.
The angles of the darker painted area are important… because you will need to actually paint these angles in, not just a band of color. At each angle ( on the right or left side of the line you will need to shade in a gray or darker shade of the paint. This is what will make the ceiling “lift”.
This will be easy to achieve and because your ceiling is far away from the viewers eye… will fool the eye at least for a short while.
After the band of color is painted on… go back and draw in the 4 angled lines. A really easy way to do this is with a water color pencil. Go over the line several times with your water color pencil, using either a gray or brown pencil. Then… with a damp, not wet, paint brush blend the watercolor pencil line to the right side of the line.
When you get down from your ladder, you will be amazed at the results.
Remember to use good taping techniques to get a crisp line for your “tray ceiling color” and then after the tape is off… do the “shadow” lines.
Good luck!
