As decorative painting specialists serving the Chicago area, we are occasionally called on to create original painted decorative motifs that are flattering to the “period” or architectural style of a building. In this article, we are presenting two designs that we created for Arts and Crafts and Craftsman style houses.

Arts and Crafts Painted Design

Craftsman Style Painted Design

The first one is our equinox archway, designed to mirror the equinox pattern in the stained glass window in the background. The slanted and curved archway seemed like the perfect place to emphasize the delicate design of the large leaded window in the adjacent room. Coming up with the original design for the archway turned out to be the easy part. The execution of the painting was actually more challenging. First, there was the challenge to adjust the design to the geometry of the curved, slanted archway. Then, there was the added challenge of the textured plaster substrate. To meet those challenges, we used stretchable tapes of different widths. Needless to say, in order to produce a flawless result, we needed to touch up many areas where the paint had seeped around the texture and under the tape. In all, this painting project took about a week.

Another of our original designs was conceived to adorn the two coach lights on each side of the garage door for a large two-story Craftsman-style house. The garage being detached from the house, the owners did not want it to compete with the more elaborate color scheme of the house. However, they wanted the find a way to bring the full color palette of the house to the garage structure in a subtle kind of way. This design hit the spot for our client! The substrate for our painting presented similar execution challenges as the project described previously.

Finding ways to embellish and flatter the architectural features of Chicago’s vintage buildings, through the use of our decorative painting skills is part of what we love to do at Painting in Partnership.

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We have been using our skills in decorative painting to meet our clients’ requests all over Chicago and the suburban areas for nearly twenty-five years. Using our knowledge of paints, glazes, techniques and tools, we are able to meet the most demanding and unusual requests from our clients.

Decorative Finish to Mirror Artwork in a Room

For instance, a client showed me a painting in his master bath. It was about six feet long and five feet high. The painting revealed the naked body of a woman frolicking in the water. The painting had a gray band at the top and bottom and a large band of vibrant aqua, mottled with gray and cream tones to give the feel of water. The client’s request was: “Can you replicate the colors and feel of the painting around the room, as if the painting bursts out of its frame? After taking a closer look at the painting, my answer was: yes, Painting in Partnership can do this for you!

The first step in a project like this always consists of preparing a sample board to ensure good color and style matches. After the client approved the sample, we painted the walls the same shade of gray as in the painting. We then rehung the painting and established the exact height of the color bands and used a laser to spread them around the room. We then used a combination of four glazes: teal, cream, white and gray to replicate the look of the painting. We used brushes, cheesecloth and a badger brush as our main tools.

Over the years, our client’s requests have inspired the development of some of our most creative work and finishes. Decorative painting gives us a wonderful array of options to meet our clients’ most sophisticated requests.

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