How Do They Do That? Painted Woodgrain

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decorative painting, faux finish, faux woodgrain, interior design, mahogany, oak, rosewood, woodgrain

Apartment doors in New York City have to meet two criteria: they must be fireproof and self closing. A fireproof door can be either a kalamein door, which is wood wrapped in steel, or a hollow core steel door, which is found in newer construction. So no matter where you live, whether on Fifth Avenue or in a tenement building, your front door is made of steel.

What does this have to do with painting wood, you ask? Lots! If you own a gorgeous apartment and your foyer is paneled in mahogany and furnished with all sorts of swanky stuff and your front door is ugly old steel, what do you do? You paint your door to look like the wood in the rest of your foyer, that’s what.

This door has been painted to look like mahogany. The molding is painted as well, to create a 3-D, or trompe l’oeil, effect.

Painting doors as wood grain is one of my favorite projects, and has always been a steady source of work. No matter how much design trends come and go, a front door that’s made of wood (or appears to be) is always beautiful.

This door matches the simple wood closet doors in this entry foyer.

Painting wood seems complicated, but it’s actually not. It’s about two basic things, pattern and color, and once you understand how to see wood in this way, you can imitate almost any wood.

Most woods can be broken down into three layers: the flogging layer, which represents the pore structure, which are the tiny dots that are found in almost every wood; the figure grain, which is the pattern created by the sap; and the toning layer, which is the overall color of the wood. Each layer has a different color and pattern. Therefore, if you can look at the real wood you’re matching and can recognize and visually separate the color and pattern of each of these layers, you can paint them. And if you’ve seen it all correctly, when the layers combine, voila! Wood. Obviously this takes a bit of practice, but once you get it, you’ve got it.

In this working sample, each layer was taped off after completion, so you can see how layers and color build up to create a pattern. In this sample, a fourth layer called the crossfire layer was added. Notice the color of the base coat in relation to the final result. The base coat is always lighter than the final finish while tilting toward the wood’s deepest color. Most woods receive a final coat of varnish as well.

Each layer uses different brushes to create a specific pattern. Here’s a quick sequence of the process of painting a dark straight grain mahogany. I paint wood grain using water-based glaze.

The sample board is painted in a terra cotta colored latex base coat.

The glaze is applied with the chip brush on the right, then flogged with the flogging brush on the left.

The dried flogging layer.

Next, the figure layer glaze is applied. In this case, the figure is a straight grain, so it’s a simple downward drag of the chip brush on the right. The pattern is softened with the badger brush on the left.

Here’s a close up.

The layer needs to dry before continuing. Finally, the overglaze of the toning layer. This is a dark one. The base coat is much lighter so that there’s contrast between the colors, which helps the wood gain depth. The overglaze is applied with a soft spalter brush.

Again, the glaze is softened with the badger brush.

Once the glaze is dry, the surface is varnished with an oil-based satin varnish for more depth and protection.

Here’s another straight grain mahogany in a redder version.

This is a sample of a browner mahogany figure grain.

This wood is anigre. It’s painted with the fourth layer of crossfire over the toning layer.

This is a close up of painted rosewood. I love this wood, it’s so pretty. You can clearly see the specks of the pore structure here.

Wood doors are almost always painted to match other wood in the room and because of this, they are often assumed to be real. Sometimes faux wood molding is painted on as well, as shown in the first photo. Painted wood grain will almost always be mistaken for real wood if it’s painted where one would expect to find real wood. If you’d like to learn more about our lazy brains, it’s explained here in my post about trompe l’oeil.

This is an interior door made of wood. Unfortunately, it was made of the wrong type of wood. I painted it to match the surrounding oak cabinetry of the bathroom. Here you see the completed pore and figure layers.

Here the door is complete, with the final toning layer and varnish.

This is a close up of painted oak.

If you live in an elevator building, the elevator doors are made of steel, too. If you’re lucky enough to have an elevator that opens directly into your apartment, then you may want those doors to match your foyer or entry vestibule as well.

The real wood door is on the left; the painted elevator doors, with faux moldings, on the right.

So the next time you’re in New York, standing in front of an elevator door or an apartment door and you think you’re looking at real wood, look again… you may be wrong!

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Before and After: Faux Oak Door

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decorative painting, faux oak, faux wood, faux wood grain, glazing, oak, painted oak, painted wood, trompe l'oeil, woodgraining

This is a typical painted wood grained door project. In NYC, all exit doors (in this case, a door leading to a stairwell in an office building) are made of fireproof metal. That makes for a lot of ugly doors, so many people choose to paint them. I’m often asked to paint a door as wood to match wood that already exists in the room, although it’s more common in private apartments than in office buildings. In this case, I had to matching the surrounding real oak wainscoting and door frame in the main lobby.

A contractor applied the moldings to the door and painted a pale yellow base color. Then it was my turn. First, I hand-painted all of the figure grain (the squiggly lines) with a small brush, breaking up the lines with a comb. This was the hard part and took the better part of a day. The door surface was vertically divided into three planks that butt together so it looked realistic, since oak trees aren’t big enough to provide a single plank spanning the entire width of a door. This also mimicked the treatment on the adjacent real wood paneling.

The next day, I used a special metal roller about two inches wide called a check roller, which creates choppy dashed lines, intended to imitate the pore structure of oak grain. This was rolled to create vertical pore marks overall. Then I mixed the color for the overglaze and brushed it on. I got the color right on the first try, which was nice. Sometimes it takes two coats to build up the color to a match. Once that was dry, I applied a coat of satin varnish. Voila! Finished door. Total time: about 14 hours.

Here’s my bible when it comes to wood graining and other decorative finishes, “The Art of Faux.” The author, Pierre Finkelstein, offers classes in wood graining and other techniques. His workshops are fantastic.

Another excellent book is Professional Painted Finishes, which was written by the founders of The Finishing School, a decorative painting school in Floral Park, NY, also with great classes.