What is Faux Finishing or Faux Painting?

Faux painting or Faux finishing are terms used to describe a wide range of decorative painting techniques. From the French word for "fake", faux painting began as a form of replicating materials such as marble and wood with paint, but has come to encompass many other decorative finishes for walls and furniture. Faux painting has become extremely popular in home environments, with high-end homes leading the trends. In modern day faux finishing, there are two major materials/processes used. Glaze work involves using a translucent mixture of paint and glaze applied with a brush, roller, rag, or sponge, and often mimics textures, but it is always smooth to the touch. Plaster work can be done with tinted plasters, or washed over with earth pigments, and is generally applied with a trowel or spatula. The finished result can be either flat to the touch or textured.

Faux finishes:

• Marbleizing or faux marbling is used to make walls and furniture look like real marble. This can be done using either plaster or glaze techniques.
• Graining, wood graining, or faux bois (French for "fake wood") is often used to imitate exotic or hard-to-find wood varieties.
• Trompe l’oeil, "trick the eye" in French, is a realistic painting technique often used in murals, and to create architectural details.
• Venetian Plaster is a smooth and often shiny plaster design that appears textured but is smooth to the touch. Venetian plaster is one of the most popular and traditional plaster decorations.
• Color wash is a free-form finish that creates subtle variations of color using multiple hues of glaze blended together with a paint brush.
• Strie, from the French word meaning "stripe" or "streak", is a glazing technique that creates soft thin streaks of color using a paint brush. It is a technique often used to simulate fabrics such as linen and denim.
• Distressing in the decorative arts is the activity of making a piece of furniture or object appear aged and older, and there are many methods to produce an appearance of age and wear. In distressing, the object's finish is intentionally destroyed or manipulated to look less than perfect. Distressing can be applied to a variety of surfaces and materials such as wood, glass, metal, plastic and paint.
• Antiquing is a more involved form of distressing where the artisan intends to not only age a piece, but also create an antique appearance. In addition to distressing the finish, the artisan may reapply historical paint colors, antique-like faux finishing and crackle vanishes. Several methods involve glazes in which colors blend into crevices to give an antique appearance.
• Glaze in painting refers to a layer of paint, thinned with a medium, so as to become somewhat transparent. A glaze changes the color cast or texture of the surface. When the technique is used for wall glazing, the entire surface is covered, often showing traces of texture. Either oil-based or water-based materials are used for glazing walls, depending upon the desired effect.
• Scumble is a technique similar to glazing, except that the coating is opaque. It is normally quite difficult to identify if a painter has used 'scumble' on his or her work.
• Gold leaf is gold that is beaten into extremely thin sheets. The thin gold sheets are commonly used for gilding. Gold leaf is available in a wide variety of karats and shades. 23-karat gold is the most commonly used. Layering gold leaf over a surface is sometimes called gold leafing, and is a very common form of gilding. Gold leaf has traditionally been most popular and most common in its use as gilding material for decoration of art (including statues) or picture frames that are often used to hold or decorate paintings, small objects and paper art.