Creative Color Ideas For Your Bathroom Wainscoting

Choosing creative color ideas for your bathroom wainscoting is a fun and exciting activity, especially considering the high costs of having a professional do the painting. Depending on the size of the room, most of the work can be completed in a single weekend.

Consider Wainscoting as Trim

Wainscoting in a home serves the same function as baseboards, ceiling moldings and door frames. For this reason, whether wainscoting is painted, stained or varnished, it should match the rest of the trim in the home. Another consideration for choosing color ideas for bathroom wainscoting is the architectural design of the wainscoting. Most wainscoting will come in panels of either the bead board, recessed or full-wall flush varieties.

Creative Color Ideas

Emotional reactions are often derived from certain colors, especially when it comes to creating a specific mood. To create a peaceful, calming effect for the bathroom, consider choosing shades of blues or greens. If a brighter, more energetic look is desired, consider the more exciting shades of cheery yellows and the high energy of reds. Take into consideration whether or not you are trying to create a cool or warm feeling for the room. Cool colors are usually shades of blues and greens, while yellows and reds generally produce feelings of warmth.

Before finalizing color choices for bathroom wainscoting, it is a great idea to consult a color wheel. In addition to illustrating the primary, secondary and tertiary colors, this art graphic will point out which colors work well with each other, colors that do not, but more importantly which colors are complementary to each other. A very good rule of thumb is to choose favorite colors, see how they compare with other colors, and decorate your bathroom wainscoting with these choices.

Experiment with Creative Color

Before committing an entire wall to a color, experiment with the color to see if your choice looks as good on the wainscoting as it did on the color sample. Few things are as bad as painting an entire section of wainscoting and then realizing that it doesn’t turn out the way you thought it would. Additionally, take into consideration nearby fixtures, furniture and painted surfaces and try to complement them. Once settled on a color scheme for your bathroom wainscoting, you may want to purchase additional accessories to match your work. Choose vases, shower curtains and bathroom accessories to accent your new color scheme.

General Guidelines

Bathroom wainscoting may be painted before installation, obviating the need for extensive and time-consuming trimming. Minor adjustments may need to be made after installation, but will be less time consuming. If wainscoting is already in place, begin by using a 2 inch brush and create a border along the top, bottom and sides. Next, with long brush strokes, connect the top border to the bottom border, working across the wainscoting from the first border toward the end border. Use paint sparingly as it is better to use two coats of paint and cover all of the wainscoting, than one coat and leave too many “holidays” (missed spots of coverage).