Instructions for Painting Faux Panels

 

This is really easy. Anyone can do it. If you can hold a paint brush, mix paints and cut and stick masking tape, you can do this.

Here are some examples of flat doors that I have painted.

This garage door was my first faux panel project. It is a flat door and was very boring. So I painted panels on it and now it is not boring any more. People would walk up to it and touch it to see if  it really was flat.

This is the side door to the garage. It is also flat below the window, which is a real window.

This is the door to our attic. The molding around the edges is real, but the muntins and sky are faux.

And here is one more flat door. I took this picture before it was reinstalled. After we hung it, the space was too small to get another picture of it. It goes down to our basement.

 

Step by Step Instructions

You will need:

I use acrylic craft paints (for the white and dark) to tint the background paints to get the colors I need. You need 4 shades different from the background. It works best if your background is a medium--so you can go two shades lighter and two shades darker. Test these colors on a test board.

For this project I am painting two flat plywood cupboard doors. This is what the cupboard looked like when finished.

The stippling and rosemaling were done after the faux panels were finished and are not a part of this project.

In this example I am doing two cupboard doors. It's the repetition of the corners that makes it convincing, so doing one panel inside another is better than doing just one. You can also do several single squares next to each other, as for my garage door above. The French call this trompe l'oeil, meaning "fool the eye." One single faux panel may not be enough to "fool" the eye, but if you repeat the effect, the eye (or rather the brain) can be completely duped. You may be surprised at how easy it is to do this.

Measure and tape off the areas to be painted. Do all the panels at once. Here I used white masking tape that is 1" wide. It was therefore easy to make the space between the outer and inner painted areas one inch wide. The outer painted bar is 1/2" wide and the inner one 1/4" wide. This tape comes in different widths, so pick the size that will work best for you. Cut the tape at the corners so it is square.

Next tape the diagonals. I am going to paint the vertical bars first, so the diagonal tape is applied above and below the vertical bars.

You will paint all 4 vertical bars; let that dry; retape just the diagonals; paint all four horizontal bars and you are done.

Now you are ready to paint the vertical bars. Here's where it helps to be able to visualize what you are doing.

First imagine that the light is coming from above and either right or left. Then be consistent. The part of the molding that faces up will be the brightest. You may just use white for that one. The one that faces down will be the darkest. (The one that faces up may be at the bottom and the one that faces down may be at the top.) On the sides you will have the two medium shades. If your imaginary light source is on the left, then the part of the molding that faces left will be your second brightest color and the part that faces right is your second darker shade. Number these shades 1 for the brightest, 2 next, 3 next and 4 for the darkest. When you paint the verticals, you will use colors 2 and 3. I have decided that my light source will be from the upper left, which is where the window in the room is. But if I were to move this cupboard to a different room with a window on the other side, it would still look fine.

I am trying to simulate a raised panel inside a recessed one. If you have paneled doors they are probably like this. Go look at one.

Use color 3 for the bars that face away from the light, which is the outer left bar and the inner right bar.

Here I have painted the first 4 bars with color 3--the outside bars on the left and the inside bars on the right.

Next you paint the other set of verticals with color 2. Like this. (You don't need to do any more taping yet.)

Now remove the tape just on the diagonals. Let the paint dry and retape the diagonals the other way, so you can paint the top and bottom bars. The ones that face up will be color 1(the brightest) and the ones that face down color 4 (the darkest). Like this.

 Now remove all the tape and you are done.

Apparently, though I took many pictures during this process, I didn't take one at this stage. I had done the stippling and shading of the space between the inner and outer molding and begun the rosemaling before I remembered to take this picture. All of those things are extra. If you don't do any of that, your result at this point would look like the photo above of the side door to the garage, or the lower panels on the yellow door.

Feel free to e-mail me if you have any questions.  Have fun and send me a picture of your finished project!!!

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Here are some projects that were painted by others according to these directions.

First a door painted by Carol in her kitchen in Iowa.

And faux panels painted by Kathleen in a long hallway in her home in Washington.

 

Thanks Carol and Kathleen for letting me use the photos of your projects.