Add Interest to Bathroom Walls with Texture

Adding texture to your bathroom walls can be a fun way to change the room’s aesthetic appeal while also working to disguise imperfections, dents, and dings that ordinarily ruin a paint job and can take time to repair. Texturing is similar to plastering, and can be an easy do-it-yourself project.

Traditional Plaster

If you already have plaster walls in the bathroom, a fresh coat of plaster can be a way to smooth out the finish or correct existing damage. The finish coat can be textured or rough, depending on how rough the plaster is that you are using, how much water you add to the plaster and how the finishing tools are used. For a textured look, the finish is stippled with a brush for a look that is mottled or textured. You can add sand to traditional plaster to get an even more textured finish, but keep in mind that a sand coat does not set up as rapidly as traditional plaster does. Sand coatings are often applied very thickly and shaped or worked around with texture pads, sponges and trowels to achieve the desired variation and pattern that you want. You can also tint the plaster before it is applied rather than going with basic white or cream colors.

Spray Textures for Your Bathroom Walls

Some people love to work with spray on textures that are similar to the mix that is found in joint compound. Just like plaster, this spray mix will hide any imperfections in the wall and give your wall an elegant look. The most popular spray texture is an un-aggregated wall finish that comes packaged as a dry mix that you must then blend with water to achieve your desired level of consistency. Once you have mixed the spray, you will load it into an airless sprayer. Most folks are better off renting the sprayer at a home improvement store as opposed to buying a sprayer. The nozzle setting and the size of the spray tip will define the level of texturing, including heavy, medium or fine.

You can mix the spray in a pail and then pour the mix into the hopper on the machine. If you choose to spray texture your bathroom walls, be sure to practice beforehand on some scrap wall board so that you can determine the best consistency for the look that you are trying to achieve. After the spray has been applied, you can take a trowel to knock down or even out the surface to the level of texture that you like most. As a general rule, the wetter your spray, the more the spray will flatten out, and the easier it will be to work with. The fun doesn't necessarily stop there. Once you have knocked the surface down to the look that you want, and the walls have dried and set up, you can apply any color of paint that you like to the textured surface. Be sure to prime and seal the surface, including in any crevices, before adding a finishing coat of paint.

Textured walls are the most forgiving of all wall types, which is why they are becoming immensely popular with do-it-yourself types.