Solve the Decorating Tall Walls Dilemma

You may also want to consider wallpaper or a wallpaper border when decorating tall walls. Yikes! I can’t believe I said that! I usually don’t like to recommend wallpaper because it becomes dated quickly and it can be a real pain in the neck to remove. But some special circumstances call for the use of wallpaper. Install a border around the room in place of a chair rail. Paint the half below the border a dark color found in the border. Paint the ceiling and the wall above the border a lighter tint of the color below the border. When you walk into the room, your eye will automatically be drawn to the pattern of the border which carries your eye around the room rather than up to the top of the wall. You can achieve this same result by using variations of this idea such as wallpapering below the border or installing a chair rail in place of the wall paper border. Avoid installing the border at the top where the ceiling meets the wall because this will draw your eye up.

Another idea when decorating tall walls is to paint horizontal stripes around the room. You’ve heard the fashion advice that horizontal stripes make you look wider, right? Well, it works the same way when you’re home decorating. Painting horizontal stripes will make the ceiling feel a little lower. The stripes will also draw your eye down to a more intimate level. There are many different ways to paint stripes when you're decorating tall walls. Here’s how to achieve my favorite look. Paint the wall your chosen base color and allow to dry for a couple of days until paint cures. You will also need 3 accent colors in addition to your wall color. If you have a small room, purchase the accent paint colors in quarts to avoid wasting paint and money. I recommend that you use a monochromatic color scheme like the one below to avoid the race car stripe look, that is unless you want the race car stripes look, which is quite appropriate for a game room or recreation room. Here’s how to follow the chart below. It does take some time and patience, but the results are worth it! Be sure not to rush so this idea for tall walls will turn out just right.

Carefully stick the painters tape along the top and bottom edge of the top stripe. Paint this stripe accent color #1. Allow to dry. Next apply the tape to the top and bottom the 3rd stripe where accent color #2 will go. Then paint with the second accent color. Allow to dry. Finally, apply the tape to the top and bottom on the 4th stripe and paint. Allow the paint to dry for several hours. If you can still see the base color through the accent colors, paint the accent colors again. Once all the paint is completely dry, you are ready for the most exciting part! Peel off the tape. Voila! Your greatest efforts revealed at last! Decorating tall walls isn't so difficult after all. You may need to touch up a little with a tiny artist paint brush. Hopefully, if you were careful to press the tape down along each line so there will not be any paint bleed through to deal with.

Now you see that decorating tall walls is like any other decorating dilemma. You just have to know how to create an optical illusion to fool the eye.