Accent Walls: When They Work

A single wall in a deeper or bolder color can give a room a focus it did not have. It can also look like a mistake: a stripe of color on the wrong wall, stopping in the wrong place, with a wavy edge where it meets the ceiling. The difference comes down to three decisions, which wall, where the color stops, and how cleanly it is cut in, and then to the extra care a deep color needs to look even.

When does an accent wall work?

It works when it reinforces something the room is already doing. Every room has a wall the eye goes to, either because you face it when you enter or because the furniture is arranged around it. Painting that wall a stronger color confirms what the room is about. Painting a different wall, one you only see on your way out, competes with it.

The best candidates are:

• The wall behind a bed. The headboard wall is what a bedroom is arranged around, and a deeper color there makes the room feel enclosed and restful.
• A fireplace wall. The fireplace is already the focus; color frames it.
• The wall behind a sofa or a dining table, where the furniture sits against it and the wall becomes a backdrop.
• The far wall of a long, narrow room. A deeper color on the short end wall appears to bring it closer, which can make a corridor-like room feel better proportioned.

When does it not work?

An accent wall struggles on any wall that is broken up. A wall with a door, two windows, a thermostat and an air return on it is mostly openings and interruptions; color on what remains looks patchy rather than deliberate. It also struggles in very small rooms where every wall is visible at once, and in open-plan spaces where there is no clear end to one room and beginning of the next. In an open plan, an accent is better tied to an architectural element, such as a chimney breast, an alcove or a staircase wall, than to an arbitrary stretch of drywall.

Where should the color stop?

At inside corners. An inside corner, where two walls meet facing one another, is a natural edge, and a change of color there looks like it belongs to the architecture. An outside corner, the kind that sticks out into the room, is a poor place to stop, because you see both sides of the corner at once and the color appears to end in mid-air.

If the wall you want has no inside corner to stop at, for example a wall that runs into an archway or continues into a hallway, the edge needs planning. Sometimes the answer is to carry the color around a feature, such as a niche or a soffit, so the edge lands somewhere that makes sense.

How is a crisp line cut?

The line at the ceiling and the corners is what makes an accent wall look professional or homemade. There are two ways to get it, and both need a steady hand.

1. Cut in by hand. An experienced painter with a good angled brush can cut a dead-straight line along a ceiling or into a corner freehand, following the true edge of the surface rather than a tape line that may wander.
2. Tape, sealed. Where tape is used, its edge is sealed first with the color of the surface being protected, so any paint that creeps under the tape is the color that belongs there. Then the accent color goes on, and the tape comes off while the paint is still slightly soft.

Textured walls make this harder. Many homes in newer communities like Eastlake and Otay Ranch and the tracts around Santee have orange peel or knockdown texture on the walls, and tape cannot seal into texture the way it does on smooth drywall. On textured walls, a sharp line is mostly brush skill.

The order matters too. Ceilings are painted first, then the surrounding walls, and the accent wall last, so its edges are cut against surfaces that are already finished.

Why deep colors need more care

Most accent walls are deep colors, and deep colors are harder to apply evenly than light ones. They are mixed in clear bases that carry a lot of colorant and much less of the white pigment that gives a paint its hiding power. In practice:

• They often need a tinted primer. A primer tinted toward the finish color, often a gray of the right depth, gives the color a uniform base and reduces the coats needed.
• They often need more than two coats. Strong reds, yellows and some blues and greens are the most stubborn.
• They show lap marks. A deep color rolled in patches that dried at different times shows every overlap. The roller is kept wet and the wall is rolled from top to bottom in continuous sections.
• They show touch-ups. Patching a deep wall later rarely blends; it is usually repainted corner to corner.

Low sheens hide the most on a deep wall. A deep color in satin or higher shows every roller texture and every dent.

Choosing the color

An accent color has to belong to the rest of the room: drawn from a fabric, a rug or a piece of art, or a deeper version of the main wall color. Test it large, on the wall itself, for a few days. How to choose a paint color covers the habits that help.

Talk it through first

An accent wall is a small job, and no job is too small. Ebenezer will look at the room with you, tell you which wall he thinks will work and why, and explain what a deep color involves before anything starts. If you want to try something bold: absolutely, it’s possible. It just has to be planned.

Ask for a free estimate, or read more about interior painting and painting over a dark color if you ever want to change it back.