A Fresh Take on Painted Floors
As long as I can remember, Lauren has admired painted floors, the more intricate the better. I knew that once she had her own home, a painted floor would be a prominent feature. After a deep dive into the history of decorative floors, and enough visual inspiration to give her confidence to paint the entryway floor in her home, she jumped right in.
![Jackie-Kennedy's-Cape-Cod-House](https://mcgrath2.com/wp-content/uploads/Jackie-Kennedys-Cape-Cod-House-1.jpg)
![Bunny Williams Interior 2018](https://mcgrath2.com/wp-content/uploads/Bunny-Williams-Interior-2018.jpg)
Lauren described her inspiration for her patterned floor as Swedish Gustavian meets American Farmhouse. The idea of pairing a strong, linear pattern on the floors with a more soft swirly pattern on the stencil on the walls was popular during the Federal period. It was considered an avenue for personal expression. For Lauren, not much has changed. She loves colorful rooms, and she never shies away from a good pattern play.
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This is a diagram we created to help us determine how the pattern played in the room itself. It was important not to make it too big for the scale of the room, but also not too small.
![](https://mcgrath2.com/wp-content/uploads/IMG_0749-3-e1547574437915-1536x2048.jpg)
We selected paint colors derived from the palette of the wall stencil, then our decorative painting team mixed these acrylic colors by hand to achieve colors with less value, while retaining their hue.
The paint color is applied by hand with a brush, then peeled away with a brush and a cotton rag to create a distressed effect.
A perfect balance of colors is key. We wanted the gray to look like the color of slate tile.
It’s starting to look like we intended. We love when that happens!
Quickly drying the paint so we can see how the floors will look when dry. There’s always such a huge difference between wet and dry paint when it comes to color — don’t be fooled!
Come back next week and we’ll show you the finished floor. We can’t wait to see it ourselves!
![](https://mcgrath2.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/philip_gorivan_house_beautiful_josef_frank1.jpg)
![](https://mcgrath2.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Katie-Ridder_Arkansas_Livin.jpg)
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