Provides the reader with everything they need to know about paint, from buying and mixing paints, to methods for using colour and creative techniques in new ways. Designer treatments show how paint techniques can be used over a range of surfaces from walls and floors to furniture and fabrics, offering inspiration and revealing the exciting potential of inventive colour and pattern combinations. Illustrated directories for the full palette of paint types and their properties, for the range of effects achievable with them, are put into practice in imaginative projects. These take the reader through the practical details and show how techniques can be adapted and combined to create original schemes - Klimt-inspired gold swirls, fake-fur effect walls, or a mosaic floor.
Interior Decorator, David Carter, has the flair and expertise of a born designer and in
The Complete Paint Book he shares his imagination and expertise. As its name suggests, the book is a paint bible, covering everything from types of paint and methods of application, to colours, surfaces and finishes.
The first chapter of the book addresses space and colour and points out appropriate colour schemes for spaces including low-ceilinged or dark rooms. The way in which colour affects the light in these spaces is illustrated by splendid photography, for example a vivid carmine-red which allows light to ricochet within a narrow stairwell.
To make interior design less daunting, Carter offers inspiration on decorative schemes for every room in the house. Suggestions include blocks of colour in stairways, studies with delicate colours and broken geometry, and children's rooms with wildly experimental stencilling. He also presents ideas for kitchens, living rooms, dining rooms and exteriors.
The most impressive part of the book is the section on techniques and effects. Carter offers clear and practical instruction in how to achieve effects including colour-washing, combing and stippling, wood-graining and trompe l'oeil. Every finish is accompanied by illustrations, a list of materials and equipment and rooms in which it will work well.
The book caters to a wide range of tastes and the final chapter is devoted to interior design "projects" where whole rooms, ranging from a fake-fur interior to an Empire Style Salon, are created with step by step instructions and diagrams and inspirational photography.
Lastly this book includes a comprehensive directory of paints and surfaces, including an easy-to-use grid to match paint-finishes to surfaces, and an extremely useful, illustrated guide to painting equipment. --Karen Homer
