Wall Painting in the Grisaille Style: Creating a Memorable Powder Room

Growing up, my friends had posters of Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix adorning their bedroom walls. I had a poster from a grisaille exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. Grisaille, rooted in the French word for gray is a technique of monochromatic painting in multiple shades of gray or gray based tones.

Interior designer, Michael S. Smith included a hand painted mural in a dining room, writing “A hand painted mural gives the room a whole other atmosphere transporting you to another space and time…Things like murals and antique mirrors can take an ordinary room and make it magical.”

Interior designer, Suzanne Rheinstein commissioned Bob Christian to paint a wall mural for the living room of her home in Manhattan.

Designer Crystal Sinclair included a wall mural in the powder room of this Larchmont, New York home.

The cabinetry and wall murals in this Cotswold cottage featured in House and Garden UK were painted by an artisan from Will Foster Studios.

This photo is from the April issue of House and Garden (UK). Notice the painted pedimented doors on the rear wall of this salon. These are modern day versions of the work of French artist Christian Berard whose work was featured in Vogue in the 1930’s and who created the sets for the Theater de la Mode, a traveling exhibition of fashion dolls dressed in French haute couture. His style of using the grisaille technique to create faux ornamentation on walls and furniture is much imitated today.

Wall paintings originated long before you might imagine. Margherita Cole (mymodernmet.com) writes about the earliest known wall paintings in the Lascaux caves in France, dating from the upper Paleolithic era (50,000 – 12, 000 years ago).

Both de Gournay and Zuber have been producing hand painted wall papers for hundreds of years. Their papers are still painted by hand and include some grisaille patterns as you see here. It was fascinating to read about the process and to learn they have even customized painted wall papers to include images of a client’s beloved pet. These painted wall papers can be removed from the wall and often travel with the owner to another city and/or may be passed down to their children.

In The Perfect Bath Barbara Sallick writes, “…the powder room is often the most extravagant space in the house” and “…the powder room needn’t connect aesthetically to the rest of the décor, so it can be a showcase for fantastic mirrors, lighting, vanities, fixtures, and objects.”

We have an unusually shaped long rectilinear powder room. There is a door in the middle of the long wall. The ceilings are 10 feet tall. This helps as it easily accommodates a gold framed mirror which has traveled with us for 15 years. It once hung over a fireplace mantle and then, when we moved to the downtown loft, we left it leaning against the brick wall in our bedroom. It took some effort to hang it here in our powder room. After hanging the mirror, we spent months trying different configurations of pictures on the walls. Nothing seemed to pop or create the unique experience we wanted for our guests and ourselves in this room.

Finally, after thinking about it for some time, studying grisaille nature scenes, and even photocopying some small prints we had framed from a book of watercolors made in Italy during the early 19^th century, I summoned up the courage to go at our powder room walls with my own rendition of a grisaille nature scene inspired by my reading of the literature and visual references.

The painting would be looser and more impressionistic as I wanted to work directly on the textured walls we had, keeping the process as straightforward and simple as possible. Our thinking, if we didn’t like it, we could paint over the work and return to the oyster white walls we had originally.

Using plastic measuring cups and spoons was enormously helpful in creating the colors to be used. The base paints were two wall paint colors we already had on hand, Sherwin Williams Oyster White and Tobacco. To mix the lighter shades start with Oyster White and add increments of ¼ to full teaspoons of Tobacco. To mix the darker shades, start with Tobacco and again, add increments of ¼ to full teaspoons of Oyster White.

Test squares of the color mixes were painted directly on a photocopy of a grisaille landscape drawing with the “formula” written underneath. I had originally penciled a line grid over a photocopy planning to draw chalk lines on the powder room walls, but it seemed these would be difficult to eliminate. The entire floor, vanity, and toilet were covered in painter’s drop cloths. This helped me focus on painting without worrying about getting the paint all over the room. I began by using one of the lighter colors and a large sponge to create a cloudy sky two-thirds of the way down from the ceiling to the floor around the entire room.

In the beginning it was helpful to refer to the photocopy to help me size my painting to our wall.

A 1 foot square of stiff watercolor paper provided another sizing reference.

The entire process took about a week. As the work progressed, I became more comfortable with my own painting, referring less to the printed images and more to the painting itself and to the shape of the trees in relation to the walls of the powder room. A folding ladder was needed to reach the upper levels of the walls. It was a logistic challenge to paint over the toilet. The photos below record the process.

There was an incredible peace in painting, all alone in the room with the door shut most of the time to accommodate the ladder and enable a view of all four walls. When you carefully plan and then begin to execute something like this you can really feel what we read about as the “flow”. Honestly, there were times when it seemed as if my hands knew what to do on their own.

This room has gone from being a sterile place to one of our favorite rooms. The images on the walls warm the space and envelope you. They reflect back in the tall mirror over the sink, and it actually feels as if you are inside the painting. Every time I enter the room I feel a sense of accomplishment and joy. Sometimes you have to put your fears aside and try something you have never done before!