Painted Stripes on Bathroom Ceiling

Painted Stripes on Ceiling – Craftsman Style

Gilded Stripes on Ceiling – Craftsman Style

As Painting and Decorating Contractors in the Chicago Area, we are called on to execute an array of decorative painting projects. Stripes are one of the options in our bag of tricks. Painted stripes are more commonly thought of to ornate walls, either as a border, or in vertical or horizontal patterns. Unlike wallpaper, painted stripes are custom and can be adjusted to exactly fit the dimensions of a wall. The size and sheen of the stripes can be tailored to meet any need at hand.

An often-overlooked application for painted stripes involves ceilings. We recently worked on such a project in a 1920’s bungalow on Chicago’s North side. The room was the house’s hall bath. The lower six feet of the walls was clad with a white subway tile, a black bullnose and base, as well as a thin patterned black/white stripe. We painted the upper wall and ceiling in a color to match the white tile. Then came the fun part: executing a stripe pattern that worked well with five inside corners and one outside corner.

Coming up with the appropriate design was a major challenge. The lady of the house had a picture of a ceiling pattern. However, it turned out it could not accommodate the outside corner, without making the pattern look disjointed. This is when her husband was inspired to try his hands at coming up with a design. His first attempt crashed and burned. His second was a resounding success: he nailed the design, as shown in the attached picture!

Painted stripe designs can also be very effective in “Period” houses, like Art Nouveau, Craftsman or Art Deco styles. I have attached pictures of two Craftsman-style projects to illustrate the possibilities. For the first one, we created a Gingko-leaf pattern to frame the four corners of a living room. In that case only a single painted stripe was used, which led the eye to the corner designs. The second project involved a dining room. In that case, we gilded a more intricate stripe pattern. That project also involved gilding square wood buttons in the upper corners of five-foot panels framing the room. Look at the metallic sheen!

Offering decorative painting custom solutions to help enhance the beauty of our clients’ vintage houses is part of what we do as house painting contractors.

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