We Never Knew About This Foolproof Way To Add Color + Texture To a Wall -- But Now We’re Obsessed

While rag-rolling is a great technique to add texture and an aged look to a painted wall, you *can* run the risk of going a little overboard.

That’s exactly what happened with a member of our studio audience named Ann -- so design expert and HGTV star Taniya Nayak stepped in.

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Q: “We have a beach house in New Jersey and we just moved there permanently. I wanted to jazz it up so I painted an accent wall that popped color and texture. I found out about rag-rolling and I used four colors. I think four may have been a little too many. How many colors would be ideal to use?”

- Ann

A: “Oh boy, that’s a lot of color! We need to have a design intervention.” Nayak recommends getting started by sticking to a limited paint palette of just two or three colors with one crucial rule.

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“We are going to use a few different colors but they’re going to be the same paint color, but different tones,” she explains.

Think about when you pick up a paint strip at the hardware store and choose light, medium, and dark tones from that strip.

(Pro-tip: This also works for an entire house, if you want to paint different rooms in different colors. It will look like a designer came and did it for you!)

For rag-rolling, you can create this vintage-inspired faux-finish look in just three easy steps:

First, mix your lightest color with decorative glaze. One part paint to four parts glaze. “All that's doing is thinning it out a bit so that it’s not as opaque,” explains Nayak. Smooth it on with a clean rag and while it’s almost going to disappear, it will give the wall texture. Plus, it will get darker as it dries.

Next, take a darker shade and brush it on, very lightly, with a dry brush. This will create that streaky, antiqued look. Repeat as needed.

If you want to give it even more of an aged look, spritz on a mixture of water and vinegar. This causes air bubbles to rise to the surface of the paint, says Nayak.

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