Nursery Mural Tutorial

Hello Everyone, I just created this beautiful Nursery Mural. I am so excited with how it came out that I decided the world had to know. The tutorial below should walk you through how to execute a personal project nursery mural of your own.

I make heavy use of photoshop in this process, but any image rendering software will do.

Step 1: choose a picture or draw one. This is not an easy task. What is your theme? Pick a color palette that resonates with you. You can tweak the colors a bit later, but its easiest when the source image is as close as the final rendering as possible.

Tip: think about how the image looks when it is scaled up. Sizing of individual components matters when you are covering a wall. Too much detail and you will be overwhelmed by the task. Less will be more here.

Step 2: Match the Dimensions. Measure your wall and measure the image you have. Crop your image to match the dimensions.

- If you don’t want to do any math, you can go ahead and make your image the same size in inches as your wall is in feet.

- For instance, if your wall is 11x9ft like mine was, choose the crop tool in photoshop to be 11x9 inches, or simply 11x9).If your image isn’t that big, you can turn off the “constrain ratios” option.

- If you do want to do math, use your proportions equations solving for the dimension you don’t mind cutting to be shorter. I used pixels here instead of images because my source image was natively measured in pixels.

o For instance 11 feet long/9 feet wide = 1200px wide /X pxs tall. Solving for x in height= 1200 px /(11feet/9feet). This equation will have you define the height of the image.

o this is the method I used.

Step 3: Simplify the image. You likely don’t need as much detail as the source image. Simplifying the image will reduce the number of features you will have to draw later. I used the “cutout” filter in photoshop. In my version of Photoshop this was in the “more filters” options. Play around with the options until the image matches the level of detail that you think looks doable to draw without overwhelming yourself later.

Optional Step 4: Change/tweak the colors. Now is the time to mess with the colors of the image. I decided that a baby girls room required more pastels than the source image did. I also thought that bright colors would be overwhelming in a full sized image the size of my wall. I decided to “desaturate” the image and replace some colors to match other items I have already purchased for the room. I did this by going to Hue/Saturation (Ctrl+U) and reducing the saturation. In my image I had three distinct planes, so I chose saturation values of each plane separately, using the magnetic select tool to select each plane individually.

Step 5: reduce the color palette. I chose to do this by exporting the image for web formats. Go to File  Export  save for web (legacy). On the right hand side of the menu bar you will see an option for how many colors. Choose the number of colors you want to buy. For me the sweet spot was 8 colors.

Optional step 6: Further reduce the color palate. If you are cheap like me, you probably looked at the exported colors and wondered if you really need them all. If two very similar colors (like two whites) were exported, I went back to the source image and selected the second white and made it the color of the first white to see if I missed the loss of fidelity. I was able to narrow my color palate to 6 colors.

Once you are happy with your colors: Hover over each of the colors displayed in the color table. Laboriously write down the hexadecimal codes provided. You will use those in the next step.

Step 7: chose the paint.

I decided that home depot would be the easiest place for me to get paint. They sell Behr there.

To get colors that match my image, we went to this website and found the color that most closely matched the hexadecimal code. https://encycolorpedia.com/

Optional Step 8: Confirm Paint colors.

Because my husband wanted to be precise about it, he made me take the paint swabs we chose from the color picker and create a mock up of the image in photoshop. This was done over an abundance of caution because the colors we picked weren’t 100% exact from the photoshop image and hexadecimal codes. It felt like a lot of extra work for nothing, but it was easier to match the colors to the image after the fact once our paint was in hand, and there were no surprises once we started painting.

Step 9: Go to the store and buy your paint. I found that an 8ounce container of each color was sufficient to cover the wall. We only had to buy one extra 8 ounce container of the white for extra good coverage. Overall it was ~$48 of paint.

While you are there, buy some paint brushes (I used an angled quarter inch brush, a one inch brush, and a 2 inch brush), some painters tape, and your perfered method of large area application (sponge, roller, or 4” paint brushes).

Me drawing the image of the wall with a grid and a pencil

Tip: you don’t have to go crazy on brushes, but the 1$ brushes will drive you nuts. If you can afford the 2$ or 4$ brushes, the paint will go on much more smoothly, be easier to clean, and you won’t lose bristles in your wall. It will be worth it if you think you will reuse them, and are diligent about cleaning.

Step 10: Prep your wall and work area.

Cover your trim, borders of adjacent walls, and electrical outlets with painters tape. Remove wall hangings and nails. Use a drop cloth and tape it to your wall. I keep old sheets and table cloths around for this purpose. Old car covers are also good drop cloths. Old towels are also nice to get out and put on the ground to save your knees when you are crawling around later. I found it very uncomfortable to crawl around at 6 months pregnant.

There are two methods for getting the image on the wall that I will suggest here

Step 11 option 1: Free hand method. This is what I did.

a) Print out your image after post processing and cropping. Print 2 if you have someone helping you

b) Draw a grid on the image. The number of squares on the grid should roughly match your drawing confidence. I have reasonably good drawing confidence, so I made a 4x4 grid. I don’t think 6x6 would be out of hand, but 12x12 would likely feel excessive.

c) Draw the same grid using a pencil and a ruler on your wall using a pencil. I own a 3’ architects square but you don’t need this. Do not use a sharpie.

d) Now draw: Using a pencil, methodically reference your image and go box by box, drawing what is in each box and matching it to what’s on the paper.

This step took me ~1 hour

Step 11 option 2:

- If you have a projector, now is the time to reap the benefit of owning such a device. I own a projector, but I did not feel like doing the work to reposition it to the nursery, and drawing with the bright projector light in the dark room hurts my eyes. I also did not find it intimidating to draw it. You can likely find a projector on the used market for less than $200.

Step 12: PAINT

Finally you are painting. Turn on a fan, open a window, and ensure the room is ventilated overall. This is especially important if you are pregnant like I was during this task.

Referencing your image, fill in colors. You can do this step however you like, but this is what I did

1) Find your edges. Using the quarter inch brush, paint in the outlines. Put outlines of each color of the edge, making crisp lines with the smallest brush you bought.

2) Paint in the base color in the background using the large paint brush/roller/or sponge.

3) Use the 1” or 2” brush to fill in medium large swatches, being careful about the crisp edges you created.

4) Go back and make second coats in areas where it had dried (~15 mins) where the spots look thin or you can see the background wall behind it.

This step took me ~10 hours.

Then you are done and it looks beautiful. Remember to take pictures along the way to prove to your perfect baby that you did this yourself instead of having it professionally done!

Good luck out there! Let me know if you followed this tutorial and were successful. I’d love to see what you created.