Painting a mural on bedroom wall - what paint type to use?

[KirstyJC]

We are moving house in a couple of weeks and I rather fancy the idea of doing a bit of a mural onto DS2's bedroom wall but as I have never tried this before I would appreciate some advice!

I plan to paint the bottom part of the room in blue and the top in yellow - I did this in current house and it looks really nice, like a beach. So, I wanted to try recreating this in the new room with added fish / seaweed / octupus / chest of treasure etc.

I would obviously use normal emulsion to do the blue and yellow main colours, but what type of paint should I use for the fish etc? I don't want to be buying huge amounts of emulsion paints as there would be too much and it would be very expensive, but I do want quite a wide range of colours and for it to last.

What do all you creative types use for this?Is it something you do with cheap poster paints and then varnish over? Or is there special paints for this type of thing?

Many thanks

I've used emulsion matchpots to do murals in the past.

sample pots, kust make sure you match paint type, eg don't put flat matt over vinyl emulsion?

Trouble with sample pots is you may have to do 2 coats to get the true colour, particularly over the blue.. I have always used a cheaper acrylic i.e not from an art shop.They come in a really wide range of colours and are nice to use.

Thanks for the advice guys. I did wonder if sample pots would go over the blue as I am planning on quite a dark colour, but I think I will try cheap acrylics like Jellycat suggested - we have a cheap shop near us so will pop in there!

Now all I need to do is learn how to draw......!

acrylics, home bargains do good size tubes for 99p

I have used sample pots in the past, mainly stuck to matt and have also mixed up own colours using match pots.

If the yellow, blue is quite intense and would show through some colours. mark your design on the wall, then fill in with white paint so that it blocks out the intensity.

I've also used a permenant black marker for outlining, I find it really hard to paint an outline.

if you are worried about your drawing skills, you could try projecting the image onto the wall and marking it out first before painting it in. I must admit I cheat and get my mum to do the drawing as she is amazing, and then I paint it in. she also comes back to do some accenting for me as well. My bedroom at home is my little pony heaven. My brothers is a jungle and my sister's was full of the disney princesses dancing at a ball.

Alternatively you can cheat, if there is wallpaper or a border with fish on or similar, cut them out and paste them to the wall.

Ooh, thanks for the tips Kellestar. Esp the one about a black outline, I don't have a particularly steady hand so that might work well!

DH thinks I am mad and that I should just buy stickers to put on the wall, but I really like the idea of painting a mural.

Will see how it goes once we move!

Many thanks to all advice - really helpful!

Use a grid if you want to draw it yourself - mark a grid out on the picture you're copying, then do the same on a larger scale on the wall is light pencil, then you draw a square at a time. Works like a dream.

Oh, and I've always used matchpots. Make sure your brushes are good quality too.

I've done several now and acrylics are great. you can get cheap ones and they go further if you mix with white emulsion to get lighter versions of each colour!

Go with Acrylics! They're quite cheap and won't fade, and they are wipeable!

In the BC (Before Children) days I did our bathroom with the dolphin fresco from Knossos. I'm no artist, so first I drew the dolphin, and a few fish, on a large piece of tracing paper, then, once satisfied with my efforts, traced them onto the wall, then painted using emulsion match pots and artists' brushes. You can also get a clear waterproof (acrylic I think) to paint over it. It has lasted 10 years ...

Hi Kirsty. Hope I'm not too late with my reply, but I work as a professional mural painter so just to give you some input if you're thinking of doing this yourself. You can use either emulsions (the small sample pots) or acrylics. You'll find that even with the good quality paints, you might need 2-3 coats for some colours as it depends on the pigments etc. If you order the acrylic paints online you can get really good deals at various art materials suppliers. I work with acrylics purely because of the time I spend painting, and when I did use emulsions I just ended up with a headache at the end of each day! The grid system is a good way of getting your design onto the walls for sure. Make sure you always paint at eye level, for comfort reasons so that you don't end up with a bad neck for a week afterwards! Finally, I worked on a mural for a commercial client where they attempted to do it themselves first. They outlined the mural in permanent black marker, and 3 coats of emulsion later, it was still coming through the paint, so I would advise not to do this!