Types of Hand Painted Wall Murals
Walls murals boldly declare your own style on the largest surface in your home, and there are many different types of wall murals to fit all wall décor needs. Wall mural popularity has increased significantly over the last decade, and this article reviews wall mural options as well as the benefits and drawbacks of each wall mural style.
Hand Painted Wall Murals
Hand painted wall murals are one of my personal favorite mural styles. They add a sense of uniqueness to a room that is harder to achieve with wallpaper or stick on wall murals. Hand painted murals offer great flexibility with price ranges and sizes to fit every budget and all room shapes and sizes. The downside to selecting hand painted murals usually lies in the cost of hiring a professional muralist and communicating the vision you have for the mural so that the artist can create exactly what you desire on the wall. Fortunately, do-it-yourself options abound for those on a tight budget and even for those without an artistic bone in their bodies.
Paint-by-number wall mural patterns: One of the easiest and least expense methods for hand painting a mural is to use a paint-by-number wall mural pattern. Several companies offer these wall mural patterns, primarily for use on children’s walls.
WallNutz has a wide variety of children’s wall mural designs that are transferred to the wall using a pattern taped to the wall area, placed over large sheets of carbon paper. The user then traces over the pattern, leaving an outline on the wall when the paper is removed. An enclosed color guide allows the user to fill in areas with designated colors or to choose their own. Recommended paints are very inexpensive acrylic craft paints which are widely available at craft supply stores and the total cost of a WallNutz wall mural including pattern, paints and brushes is generally under $65 for wall murals as large as 8 feet wide by 6 feet high. Another benefit of using wall mural patterns is that you do not have to have any experience with painting murals to end up with an impressive image. The primary drawback to painting your own mural is the time commitment involved. Most murals will take an average of 10 to 30 hours to complete, depending on the size and level of detail.
Overhead projector wall murals: Overhead projectors are another option for transferring a pattern to a wall to create your own mural outline. This is an inexpensive option because you only need to find a graphic to put on a transparency, find a pencil to trace and then use the inexpensive acrylic craft paints mentioned earlier. The drawbacks to using overhead projectors to create a mural are that not everyone has easy access to a projector and sometimes the room space does not allow you to position the projector in a way that lets you get the right size or angle on the image. Another consideration is that if the projector is moved even slightly, the image may be difficult or impossible to line up again with what you already have traced on the wall, therefore, tracing all at one time is recommended. And just as with the paint-by-number wall mural patterns, painting in an image created with an overhead projector requires a significant time commitment.
Hire a muralist: Talented muralists can create amazing images with detail that is difficult to achieve through a transferred mural pattern by an inexperienced person. Of course, this talent comes at a price and most muralists charge a minimum fee that ranges from a few hundred dollars into the thousands of dollars depending on the size and complexity of the wall mural design. Before employing a muralist, you will want to take a look at his or her portfolio, ask for and check a few references, get a commitment to a schedule and have a signed bid for the work. Make sure that you both have a clear understanding of the desired wall mural outcome; it is helpful if you begin by collecting pictures of other wall mural styles, colors and images that you want to show to the artist.
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