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Monday, March 26, 2007

Painted Floors





One of the things that you do not see in Southern California a lot is painted wooden floors. Wooden floors of all types are common here, oak, walnut and mahogany are all popular, but they seem to be treated in a very special way. I know that they can be expensive, but like all other materials, I like to play around with them and see if you can get more decoration out of them, rather than just simply put them down, stain them and move on.

In a lot of older traditional homes they are painted, and I think this is such a great way to bring in color and pattern. In the image above you can see a kitchen that I did, where the floors were painted in a checker board. I think it gives such a great old world look.

Here are some tips and ideas on painting floors:



  • Don't limit yourself to a solid color, try painting in a border of another color


  • If free style painting is not your strong suit, then try stencilling, there are some great resources for these on the Internet and they can provide some great inspiration.


  • Be sure to layout the WHOLE design first, before you start to paint, it will save you from literally painting yourself into a corner!


  • In some rooms you may want to have a rug, but it might be challenging, fore instance, like in a Dining Room, where chairs can get caught on a rug. Find an image of a rug that you like and paint it on the floor.


  • One of my favorite libraries, was one where I created a Decoupage floor using, pages of books, it was a very cool installation.

Try and have fun with your floor, make it work for you, I would love to see some of your solutions.

5 comments:

Pigtown*Design said...

I think painted wood floors are great. And I love wood floors in kitchens, too.

Maison Lunatique said...

I love painted floors too. I also liked how you used a yellow/brown contrast in the checkerboard pattern. Much warmer than the usual black and white. I also love seeing those colours with the traditional marble tile in the checkerboard style.

Mark Cutler said...

Thanks, one of my favorite painted floors was diagonal stripes that were about 2 feet wide, in an otherwise, formal Living Room. It really added a punch.

The Peak of Chic said...

I love painted floors. Remember the wild floor that Albert Hadley did? I think it had a zig-zag pattern?

Anonymous said...

hi - i am trying to decoupage our large foyer area at the moment, but having great trouble. There is linoleum underneath (that i am trying to cover over; hence the decoupage), and i am getting air pockets all over the place - i started with brown paper and am putting book pages on top of that, but dont know how to fix this... do you have any suggestions? thank you so much