The $79 Paint Hack That Delivers a Luxe Wallpaper Look for 3x Cheaper

What happens when you have grass-cloth wallpaper taste with a place-mat budget? That’s a dilemma one Instagram user solved recently when redoing a room in their home. 

Although Justin Miller wanted to install pricey grass-cloth wallpaper on all the walls in his space, a budget constraint didn’t allow for it. With some creative thinking, expert planning, and a bit of bravery, Miller leaned into a faux finish paint technique that creates the illusion of grass cloth (but only requires two cans of paint!).

“Faux finishes were everywhere in the ’90s and early ’00s,” Miller wrote in the process video’s caption. “Since you can’t get faux finish glaze at every hardware store anymore, I wanted to see if I could find an alternative so I could paint some fake grass cloth!”

To really sell the paint’s finish as real grass cloth, Miller sectioned off wallpaper-size portions of his wall using painter’s tape. “I chose two colors of interior matte paint, a yellowish beige called Crepe, and a warm gold called Flax Straw,” he said. “I picked up a quart of each.”

Miller then thinned each color using water-based polyurethane to create a more transparent hue that better suited the desired effect.

The painting process goes like this: Paint a section of the wall using thinned Flax Straw, then pull the mini broom through the wet paint to create a striated, or streaky, effect. Repeat this on every other panel.

Once Behr’s Flax Straw is dried, paint over it with Behr’s Crepe (as its thinned) and pull the mini broom through it horizontally to create a woven effect. Allow these panels to dry, then rearrange the tape, and repeat the entire process on the blank panels, but reverse the horizontal and vertical pulls this time — Flax Straw gets a horizontal pull, and Crepe gets a vertical. This creates some nice variation between the two panels.

“I know this sounds complicated and time-consuming, but I did the entire room by myself in about seven hours,” Miller told his followers. “The results are night and day from a traditionally painted wall. I love the texture and depth it brings to the walls, and I know it doesn’t look identical to grass cloth, but it absolutely gives the same feeling to the room.”

“This is genius!!! It turned out so beautifully,” one person commented on Miller’s post. Another said, “Really fun!! You did such a great job!”

Another option is to source a printed grass-cloth wallpaper, such as this one from Spoonflower. It has the appearance of real grass cloth, but is a flat, peel-and-stick paper. You can also purchase this print in actual grass cloth, but it will cost you just under $250 per roll.

Add unique texture to any space with this faux grass-cloth painting technique — plus, save yourself so much time, money, and stress, without sacrificing any style!