DIY Painted Faux Weathered Barn Wall Treatment

Creating a faux weathered barn look on a wall is a great project for a family room or even a child’s bedroom. For a family room I recommend a neutral gray or beige faux weathered barn wall treatment. It lends itself well to many styles of furniture. This faux wall treatment would look great in a country kitchen. For a child’s room you could complete this DIY project in red. I put some color recommendations near the end of the article. You could continue the weathered barn theme with cow inspired bedding, burlap curtains, and almost anything barn yard. You can complete the faux weathered barn wall paint treatment easily in one weekend. You could finish in one day if you started early enough for the first coat of paint to dry completely. This project should cost you well under $100, especially if you only do one faux weathered barn wall as an accent wall.

You will need

Paint (Satin works best, one gallon in a neutral beige and the other in white)
3″ Paint brushes
Blue Painter’s Tape Pencils
Level
Exacto Knife
Natural sponge (sea sponge if you can find it, if not a large sponge dotted with lots of
Holes will work ok)

The first step to creating a truly faux weathered looking barn wall is to apply a base coat of your neutral gray paint. A color like Diverse Beige from Sherwin Williams would work well with this project. Allow this to dry before you move on to the next step of the faux paint treatment project.

Once the paint has dried you are ready to start taping off the barn wall. You need to tape off varying widths of vertical lines to create the faux weathered barn boards. Once the tape is up run your exacto knife lightly vertically along the tape in a fairly straight, but uneven pattern. Do both the left and right side of the tape. Gently pull off the outer two layers of tape, leaving the middle of the tape, to reveal your uneven lines. This will create old weathered slightly straight and uneven lines that mimic a weathered barn wall. I recommend making this line about Ã?¼” wide.

You can paint the base weathered barn color coat and complete the taping part of this faux paint project on all the walls up to this point. You will need to do complete the following faux weathered wood technique on one wall at a time though. If you work half way through a wall and stop, then you might not have a uniform look.

Once you are ready, dip your 3″ natural bristled brush into the white paint. I like to dab a little off on a dry paper towel. Start at the top of your faux barn walls and work your way down dragging the brush. Work along the wall continually until you have covered the entire wall. I find that for a weathered barn wall look, a cheaper, stiffer brush works really well. Spend your money on the paint and save a little on the tools. If you find your brush is too smooth try hitting it straight down on the bristles to rough them up a little. Do this on a piece of newspaper.

The next step in the faux weathered barn wall treatment is a lot of fun. Dip your natural sponge into the white paint. Start dragging the natural sponge down the wall in the same manner that you did the brush. This will really make your barn walls looked weathered. Work along the entire wall until it is completely covered.

After these steps, you can take your regular 3″ natural brush and dip it in the original neutral beige paint. Flick it softly at the wall to create a splatter effect in various parts of the faux weathered barn wall.

To create this same effect but in a faux weathered red barn look the steps are very similar. Start by painting your walls in a barn red color, like Hawthorne from the Eddie Bauer line of paints at Lowe’s. Use satin wall paint again. You can either by a slightly darker grayish red, or reserve some of your original barn red and add some green or black to it. Use your three-inch brush to apply a streaky coat of this darker color as before. Then use your natural sponge. Finally, splatter them all with both the original red as well as the darker red. You can use the painters tape to tape off white barn door outlines if it fits your dÃ?©cor.