Many people probably have not heard of colored wall texture and the advantages it provides in the hospitality market, health and medical environments, condominiums, commercial properties, offices, schools and other large institutional settings.  Colored wall textures are saving companies money and providing solutions in heavy traffic environments where the walls take a beating on a regular basis.  Think of hospital walls where gurneys and carts are constantly being pushed through the corridors, sometimes hitting the wall surfaces and damaging them.  Or, hotels or large office complexes where a lot of people come through on a daily basis and make contact with the walls in any number of ways.

Traditional Wall Texture Process

The traditional wall texture process was to install the drywall, tape and mud the seams, skim coat it, sand it, apply smooth coats or textured coats like orange peel or knock down, and finally prime and apply 2 coats of paint in the color you want.  That’s a lot of steps to get to a finished surface.  Then, the finished surface, which is just drywall with texture and paint, wasn’t very durable and as soon as it got hit or dinged with something hard, you could see the damage quite clearly as the exposed white drywall contrasted with whatever the wall color ended up being.

Colored Wall Texture Process

Colored wall textures solve the multiple steps and easily damaged issues quite nicely.  With a colored wall texture, you can go from taped and mudded drywall to colored finish in just two coats.  It’s like being able to apply the texture you want and paint color, all in the same process since the texture material is tinted to the finished color.  The result is a very durable textured finish in any custom color you want.  A big advantage of this product is that since the color is integrated throughout the material, if the surfaces gets dinged or nicked, you are less likely to notice since there will be no color contrast from the surface area to the damaged area.  And, since the texture material is much more durable than traditional wall texture and a painted surface, you are less likely to have damage in the first place.  Another advantage is that since it is a lot less steps, it’s a lot less labor, which translates into less money.  The project can also be put back in service in a shorter amount of time, something that is always an issue when you are working in high traffic areas or buildings.

Commercial Wall Texture Application

We applied the product on the Eide Bailly office project in Elko, Nevada.  Eide Bailley is an accounting company and has offices in 14 states, including Idaho, Nevada and Utah.  For this project, the offices were all wallpapered in a heavy-duty vinyl wall covering that was still in good shape, but was outdated.  They didn’t want to go through the time, expense and hassle of removing the wallpaper, and they were looking for a solution that could go over the wallpaper and still look nice.  We normally don’t recommend painting over wallpaper, as it will look like you just painted over wallpaper and the seams and texture will be visible thought the painted finish.  Definitely not a professional job.  However, wall texture can be applied over properly primed wallpaper.  The thicker product and the texture hide the seams and wallpaper texture, and since it’s colored texture, it eliminates the painting steps.  Quite a bit of money was save on this project simply by eliminating the wallpaper removal and using a colored texture that eliminated the need and cost to paint.

We used Acrylitex Prokote from Acrylic Technologies, Inc. and supplied by Miller Paint.  The product applies very easily with an airless sprayer or from a professional texture machine, which is what we used.  It’s a two-coat process, with the first coat being a smooth coat to achieve the build you need and then the second coat can be either smooth again, or an orange peel or knockdown texture.  We are looking forward to our next opportunity to use this time and money saving product!