New Year New Room Staircase Mural

Week Three

Welcome to week three of the New Year New Room Challenge, this week I am tackling my staircase mural. For those who are here for the first time the New Year New Room Challenge hosted by Stephanie at Casa Watkins Living. It’s the challenge is to refresh a room/space to kick off the New Year. I’ll be working on this space through January, revealing my progress every Tuesday. The last Tuesday of the month will be the reveal. You can follow along with me and the other bloggers I’ll link at the end of this post or you can join in.

For this year’s New Year New Room Challenge I will be working on the stairway up my guest room. If you missed the previous weeks of progress you can find them here:

Week 1 // Week 2 // Week 3 (you are here) // Week 4 // Reveal 

The Design

This week I conquered my tropical wall mural. You may remember last week I shared my sketch of the proposed design and the computer rendering with all the approximate colors.

The Paint

Well, this week I took that plan and made it a reality but not without a little advice. For this, I went to my friend and mural artist Rachel of Banyan Bridges. Aside from tape and brushes she also had a recommendation on paint. She suggests matte or flat paint when painting color on walls. Anything with a sheen is going to have a reflection and distract from the final image you’ve painted. Lower sheens also mask wall imperfections. I didn’t need much paint so I figured sample size pints would be the perfect size only problem most brands sell their samples in satin. After much hunting, I found that Benjamin Moore Sample samples come in Egg Shell and these are the actual colors I had mixed.

• Killala Green 558
• Sullivan Green 560
• Tropicana Cabana 2048-50
• Poolside Blue 2048-40
• Summer Plum 2074-20
• Deco Rose 1328
• Yellow Rain Coat 2020-40

I added one additional color I mixed myself using about a 1/2 and 1/2 mix of Summer Plum and Deco Rose.

Sketching On

Now to transfer the design onto the wall. For this, I like to use chalk because it is easy to edit as you draw or paint and easy to remove any of the sketches not covered by paint when you are done. In the past I have used white school chalk for this but thought on the light wall I would use a darker color so I could see it more easily. The chalk worked well but in retrospect, I would not use the darker color again. The red was a little harder to remove and left some residue that I had to scrub off with a magic eraser.

Painting the Mural

Once I had my paint I collected my brushes of all shapes and sizes. I started quite a few but ended up finding three I found the most useful.

I painted one color at a time starting with the background colors and working my way forward.

Once I had all the color blocking done I came back in to touch up areas and added highlights.

Here are the results.

What’s Next

Next week I will be installing the stair runner if shipping goes well. I’ll also be reinstalling the stair rails and hopefully making a final decision on the overhead lighting. But I’m already loving where my New Year New Room Refresh is so far.

How to Join

Now that you’ve seen what I’ve been up to, you can head to each of the links below to check out the 17 other participants. You can also follow all the behind-the-scenes progress on Instagram too using the IG handles on the image above!

Casa Watkins Living // Iris Nacole // Jennifer Rizzo // JZ Holmes // Katrina Blair // Live Pretty On A Penny // Love Your Abode // Maggie Overby Studios // Mocha Girl Place // My Eclectic Nest // Never Skip Brunch // One Handy Momma // Our Fifth House // Southern State of Mind // This Is Our Bliss // Tool Box Divas // Up To Date Interiors

Feeling inspired? You can join the challenge too! Pick a space to tackle and share your progress using the hashtag #newyearnewroomchallenge on Instagram and all social media.