The interior design world is full of unique vocabulary, but few are as important to a designer's vocabulary as texture. A key feature of design, texture can make a room feel homely and comfortable or sharp, cold and uninviting. Read on to find out what texture is and how you can apply it to feel cosy at home.
Most people will be familiar with how colours and shapes can affect the look and feel of a room. However, the surface look and feel of your furniture and decor is also an important factor in your overall design. Designers refer to this as texture.
There are two main kinds of texture:
Tactile texture: This refers to the physical texture of an object. A wood surface will feel different to a wool surface. A snug high-pile rug will feel warmer than a short-pile rug. Even if you’re not directly touching the surface, you imagine how it will feel under your hands and feet. Humans are naturally drawn to plush textures, which give a calming effect and create a warm and inviting atmosphere.
Visual texture: These are textures that we only experience through sight. One way visual texture is affected is by light. For example, surfaces that shine will make a room seem brighter or a colour lighter, while surfaces that don’t reflect light will appear darker. A room with many shiny, smooth surface may feel cold. Shiny, smooth surfaces are related to modern, minimalist and contemporary design, while rough textures will appear more rustic, farmyard or maximalist. These textures may change throughout the day as the light moves. Visual texture can also change our perspective and give a flat surface the illusion of 3D, such as magic eye puzzles or cleverly captured photographs.
Some additional types of texture include:
Simulated texture: You can convey texture purely by how an object looks and not necessarily how it feels: for example, you might have a wood grain bench with a smooth resin finish, or a rug with a distinctly stone-like pattern that you can actually sink your feet into.
Abstract texture: A surface made from certain materials is rearranged to create a new texture of its own.
Rooms benefit from a variety of balanced textures to make the room feel warm and create a sense of depth. Traditionally, hard materials evoked masculine energy and soft materials evoked femininity, so consider the energy you want your home to exude. Sheen is often used to indicate wealth (such as with silk, metallics or satin) but manufacturing has made it easy to apply sheen to almost any object in your price range.
Visual weight refers to an object or element’s ability to attract the eye. The more visual weight something has, the more it will draw in the viewer. Visual weight can help draw attention to a focal point and add interest to an entire room.
When you’re putting together a room, do you mix a lot of random pieces and put them together with a wall splatter of colour? Even maximalist homes will have a certain method to the madness, a theme that ties the room and home together. It’s the same with texture. Consider how all the components and textures affect the room and whether they’re in balance.
As we’ve mentioned, smooth and shiny textures can make a room feel cold and sterile, while plush textures do the opposite. It’s important to mix textures so that your living spaces feel livable, even if you’re going for a minimalist design.
Here is a list of common textures you may include in your home and their effect on your décor:
Rough or course textures add visual weight and are associated with warm, rustic and traditional interiors. These textures can be achieved with reclaimed wood, terracotta, and unpolished stone.
While some people might find these textures off-putting, they certainly offer a striking sense of luxury and opulence. Leather is an appealing material as it is very comfortable but also durable, and it develops a luxury sheen called a patine over time. You can also achieve these textures with PU leather, though these products will not naturally develop a patine.
These textures are associated with modern and contemporary styles. They can come across as soft, glamorous and incredibly rich when used correctly. Overused, it can make a room look cold, sterile and void. They add contrast when paired with other textures, such as a glass ornament on a wooden bookshelf. These textures can be achieved with porcelain, some plastics, glass, specialised finishes and varnishes, silk and satin.
Velvet is prized for its silky, tufted texture and unique sheen that can make any piece feel decadent. It can blend into many interiors for added warmth and colour, but it’s not an incredibly practical fabric. However, who needs practicality when you’re going for classic Hollywood glamour?
Sinking your feet into a shag rug. Burying your face in a faux fur blanket. Cuddling up in your favourite fleece dressing gown. You can imagine the luxurious feel that comes with touching a plush piece of furniture or décor. These pieces invite touch and deliver a wonderful tactile experience in any space. These textures bring lots of warmth to a room, both literally and figuratively, but can cause sensory overload when overused.
Like shiny textures, materials like chrome, silver, gold and steel can come across as cold, or they can add a fun, regal, rich or warm feel to your space. Industrial, Art Deco and Hollywood Glamour interior styles all feature metallic accents.
By combining different materials and textures in a specific way, you can tell a story about your home and the objects within. An easy way to add texture is with rugs. Not only do rugs provide warmth against harsh hardwood or tile floors, but they can add additional texture to carpeted floors too. You can even add a smaller rug on top of an area rug, for example combining a small sisal rug under your coffee table on top of a short pile patterned rug. Another way to Layered correctly, these textures will bring depth and richness to your space. Don't forget to look up! Both floor and wall coverings can have varying textures, so consider a tapestry as well as a rug.
Find textured furniture that suits your style. We don’t just mean fabric furniture: you can find pieces made from reclaimed wood with rustic edges, or vintage pieces with natural wear and tear. You can find furniture made of all sorts of materials, from wood to metal to glass. If you’re not satisfied with the texture of your existing furniture, you can change it with a little DIY and a can of paint. The options are endless, limited only by your imagination and individual taste.
Want to add some blankets and throw pillows to your couch? Don’t choose the same boring fabric over and over. Create visual interest with a different colour, combine solid colours with patterned fabric, or change the material entirely. If you have a plush couch, use a material like cotton or linen. If your couch is beautifully patterned, add a matching solid-colour faux fur blanket. Apply the same principles to your bedroom and other chairs. However, try not to go overboard - stick to around three or four different textures or fabrics per room.
Do you have a lot of empty space on your wall? Add a gallery wall! Gallery walls are perfect for adding texture as you can combine different visual textures (the artwork itself) alongside tactile textures (frames, sculptures or tapestries).
If you’re lucky enough to live in a refurbished industrial, farmyard or rustic-style home, you may have exposed architectural elements that can be used to impart texture. Exposed beams, pipes, brick walls or stone floors will add visual and textural interest to your home and help create a sense of history and purpose.
Incorporating plants and flowers into your décor is a quick and easy way to impart natural texture to the room, brighten up a space and balance sterile environments with a pop of colour.
Since lighting plays such an important part in how your textures are perceived, you’ll want to get your lighting right. A well-placed downlight will highlight your room’s best features and are perfect for gallery walls, while a floor lamp will help illuminate the entire room. Depending on your desired mood, you may choose cool white light or warm yellow light. However, nothing can beat pure natural light in terms of both interiors and health. You can position your pieces to make the most of each ray of sun and enjoy the dynamic décor. The more light the better!
For more design inspiration, check out our blog 17 Popular Interior Design Styles For Your Home. To decorate your own home like the professionals, shop with Artiss. We have a wide range of furniture in many materials, textures and colours, hand-picked by our expert decorators to enrich your home at an affordable price. Shop the look today and you’ll receive friendly and loyal customer service, access to amazing deals when you sign up to our mailing list, and the latest trending products promptly shipped to your door anywhere in Australia. Explore our full range today.
Synopsis: Joints and screw heads often show up even under three coats of joint compound because drywall’s paper face and the compound have different porosities and so reflect light differently. Rather than skim coating the walls, a faster and less expensive solution is to use a drywall primer/surfacer. Pro painter Philip Hansell thoroughly explains the two types of primer/surfacers and outlines their respective pros and cons. He also describes how to get the best results from these products.
Most new drywall has three coats of joint compound on corners and seams, but much of the drywall’s paper face is left uncoated. This is a Level 4 finish as specified by the National Gypsum Association. Even though the walls and ceilings look and feel smooth to the touch, the drywall’s paper surface and joint compound have different porosities. This means that when the wall is painted, the seams look darker and have a slightly glossier finish. The condition is worse when there’s raking light and when walls are painted with dark or glossy paints. Known as joint telegraphing, it’s a problem I’ve seen a lot in the 20 years I’ve been a painter. One common way to prevent telegraphing is to go the extra step to what the National Gypsum Association calls a Level 5 finish, which has traditionally been done by skim coating the entire drywall surface with compound. However, by using a modern drywall primer/surfacer, a crew of three or four painters can prep and spray the walls and ceilings of an entire average-size house to a Level 5 finish in one day for less cost.
You may have learned that PVA primer is the right primer for new drywall. Primer/surfacers are similar and include the same vinyl acrylic base that seals the drywall paper and compound. But primer/surfacers cover better because they have a greater percentage of solid particles than PVA primer. These solids create a uniform surface that reflects light evenly. There are two basic types of primer/surfacers: standard and high-build. The difference is in how thick they go on.
For less-demanding applications, such as under flat or nearly flat paint and on surfaces that won’t get raking light, I use standard products that apply in a coat of about 4 or 5 mils. These primer/surfacers have fewer solids (more than 40% by weight) than high-build products but still more than a run-of-the-mill PVA primer, which can contain as little as 30% solids by weight. My favorites in this class include PPG Speedhide Interior Max Prime and Sherwin-Williams Builders Solution Interior Primer/Surfacer. These products won’t produce a Level 5 finish, but they do a good job when applied over Level 4 finished drywall, and they can prevent joint telegraphing in many cases. Besides being less expensive than high-build versions (6¢ per sq. ft. vs. 13¢ per sq. ft.), these less-viscous primer/surfacers can be sprayed with less-powerful sprayers because they require a smaller tip (0.015 in. dia. to 0.021 in. dia.). Sprayers this size are lighter and less expensive than the spray rigs needed for high-build primer/surfacers, which require larger tips (0.023 in. dia. to 0.031 in. dia.). you also can roll on standard primer/surfacers with a 3⁄8-in. to 3⁄4-in. nap roller, but rollers only make sense for small jobs because spraying is much faster.
High-build primer/surfacers can contain 66% solids by weight, and they go on thick, around 20 or 25 mils wet, which is equivalent to four or five coats of regular paint. These products can fill sanding scratches, smooth drywall fuzz, and hide other small surface imperfections. For high-build primer/surfacers, I like PPG Speedhide MaxBuild and Sherwin-Williams High Build Interior Latex Primer. When applied over Level 4 drywall, these high-build products provide a Level 5 finish, which I prefer under dark or glossy paint and in harsh lighting conditions.
My crew sprays primer/surfacers when the drywall is finished and before the interior trim is installed. We start by wiping down the drywall with a commercial dust mop and then vacuuming the floor. If the finished flooring is in place, we mask and tape the floor. We mask HVAC openings, and we stuff all the electrical boxes and can lights with masking paper. We cover the exterior doors and windows with plastic masking film and then cover the perimeter of the plastic film with paper. Primer/surfacers don’t stick well to plastic masking films, so we use the additional paper layer to prevent the primer/surfacer from being blown off and contaminating the surface when we spray the base coat and topcoat of paint. We like the plastic layer underneath for two reasons: It allows some light to pass, and it installs faster because static electricity helps it cling to the window while you tape around the edges.
A commercial dust mop clears the drywall of dust. Vacuuming the floor afterward prevents dust from being stirred up by the sprayer and deposited on freshly
Cover the ventsAir-conditioning and heating ducts are covered with cling plastic sheeting to prevent overspray from getting inside the ductwork. Electrical and low-voltage cables emerging from the wall are also covered with plastic and wrapped with tape.
Mask windows and exterior doors
Doors and windows are masked with plastic sheeting and taped. Then the plastic is covered with a layer of paper because primer/surfacers don’t stick well to plastic and could be blown onto walls and ceilings when subsequent coats are sprayed.
Fill electrical boxesCan lights and electrical boxes are stuffed with masking paper so that the wire colors and any labels will still be visible after the surfaces are sprayed.
Our spray rigs generally have 100 ft. of hose, so we set the sprayer up in the center of the house. We have our paint supplier shake the paint buckets before we pick them up in the morning. The 5-gal. pails require six minutes of machine shaking, and we have a dozen or more on an average-size job, so having the paint store do the mixing saves us time. High-build products cover about 100 sq. ft. per gal., while standard primer/surfacers cover four times that amount. I always order extra because running out while on the job is an expensive waste of time.
Using a 10-in. or 15-in. extension on the spray gun, we start spraying the ceiling in a corner opposite the door so that we can work our way out of the room. The extended gun is long enough to reach 8-ft. and 9-ft. ceilings. With higher ceilings, we use a stepladder. Longer extensions are available, but we find them too heavy and bulky.
If you’re already familiar with spraying, it won’t take long to get the feel for spraying primer/surfacers. But when spraying high-build products, you’re applying the equivalent of four coats of ordinary paint in a single coat. This much material can sag on previously painted surfaces, but that is only a problem when clients use large expanses of wall to test colors. In those cases, we spray a coat that’s about half as thick as we would ordinarily apply. We have also found it important to keep primer/surfacers off of trim because they compromise the adhesion of the oil based primer we use on trim.
Since drywall primer/surfacers are latex based, cleanup is easy. We pour any remaining primer back into its original bucket and flush the sprayer with water (see Don’t Be Afraid to Spray, FHB #252). High-build primer/surfacers may take a day or more to dry in humid weather. Standard primer/surfacers take usually three or four hours. When we come back to paint the walls and ceilings, we first check the drywall for damage and patches. Small areas can be touched up with a roller, but any major drywall repairs should be resprayed, especially when the area will get strong lighting or glossy paint