Planning a Mural for a Child's Room or a Family Room

A mural is the one thing you can put on a wall that will still be there after the furniture has changed twice. That's both its appeal and its risk. People start with an idea they love, then discover the wall has opinions: a window in the wrong place, a door where the horizon wanted to be, a ceiling that's lower than the picture needs. The best murals are planned around the room first and the subject second.

Pick a subject with room to grow

For a child's room, the temptation is to paint whatever they love this month. Children's favorites move fast, so aim a little wider than the current obsession. A landscape, a night sky, a harbor or a savanna gives a young child animals and adventure to look at, and still reads as a handsome painted room to a teenager. A savanna scene with a watering hole, a giraffe under the palms or a zebra in tall grass can carry a toddler's fascination with animals and hold up as a piece of art later. A character with a logo on its shirt will have a shorter shelf life than a field of tall grass.

For a family room, the question is different. The wall gets looked at by guests, by the whole household, and often from across the room. A view works especially well: a coastline, a stairwell with a vine climbing it, a wheat field running around a doorway, a ship under full sail. These subjects open the room up instead of closing it in, and they give the eye somewhere to go during a long evening.

Scale and placement

Before anyone picks up a brush, work out where the picture lives on the wall. A mural needs a horizon line, and where that line sits decides how the whole thing feels. Set it near eye level for someone standing and the scene feels like a window. Lower it and the sky takes over and the room feels taller. In a child's room, remember that a child's eye level is much lower than yours, and a scene that works for an adult can bury the best part of the mural above a small person's head.

Furniture matters just as much. A bed, a dresser or a sofa will stand in front of part of the painting forever, so the important parts of the picture, the animal's face, the ship's sails, the focal point of the scene, need to land in the clear spaces. Mark the furniture positions on the wall with tape before the design is final. It's an easy step to skip and an expensive one to regret.

Wall prep decides how long it lasts

Paint can only be as good as the surface it sits on. Before the picture, the wall gets cleaned, patched where it needs it, sanded smooth and primed. A heavily textured wall will fight any painted detail, and fine work like fur, foliage or lettering needs a smooth ground, so sometimes the wall is skimmed first. If the room has old paint in poor shape, it comes off or gets sealed before anything new goes on top. None of this is exciting, and all of it shows up later as the difference between a mural that looks fresh and one that starts to peel at the seams.

Adapting a painting you love

Some people don't want something original. They want a picture they already love, in their own house. That's a fine reason to commission a mural, and it's a normal part of what muralists do: the work can be an original design, or a copy of existing art adapted to your wall.

The adapting is the craft. A canvas has a fixed shape, and a wall rarely does. A painter has to decide what to extend, what to crop and where the picture should bleed past a doorway or around a window. The cafe terrace at night after Van Gogh in our portfolio is a good example: the original is a specific size and shape, and the version on a wall has to be rebuilt for the room it's in, with its own colors tuned to the light there. The same goes for the night cafe interior, which was set into an accent wall. The clipper ship under full sail was done both as a mural and inside a painted frame on a red wall, and the frame version reads as a framed painting that is actually part of the plaster.

Bring the image you love, and bring photos of the wall, with the furniture in place. A few measurements save a lot of guessing. The painter can then work out how the picture fits, show you a sketch, and talk through any changes before paint touches the wall.

A short planning checklist

• Pick a subject you'll still enjoy when the room's purpose changes.
• Decide the horizon line and tape the furniture positions on the wall.
• Choose accent wall or full wall before choosing the picture.
• Settle the wall prep: patching, smoothing and priming come first.
• Approve a sketch and a color sample before the real painting starts.

Renaissance Revival Painting designs murals from scratch and adapts existing art, and the studio has been at it since 2001. The estimate is free. Call (401) 351-4757 or use the contact page, and send a photo of the wall.