The
following article will try to define what decorative painting is.
Decorative painting is a technique commonly misnamed and referred to as
“faux finishing.”
To help eliminate this confusion, I will
describe this trade. Decorative painting transforms a basecoated surface
into a decorative finish, and the majority of techniques use a glaze to
create this new finish. Some examples of this include the imitation of
natural surfaces like wood or marble, glazing to add depth and color to
the basecoat, hand-painted ornamentation and even by extension gilded
finishes and polished plaster finishes. Essentially, any way to
transform your single-color basecoat using glaze to create a new finish.
It’s important to understand that any decorative finish will be the sum
of (priming-basecoating) plus (glazing). By this, I mean that you can’t
create a faux finish without good preparation and a basecoat.