7 Creative Ways to Use Hand Painted Stone Tiles in Your Home
When we combine paint with tiles, we get the best of both worlds. Hand painted stone tiles provide the stone cold durability necessary in high work and traffic areas, like the kitchen and bathroom, while bringing in artistic sensibilities that make them feel warm and welcoming. You are not restricted by geometric lines or material constraints on this type of custom stone tile work and each design will always be unique unto itself as it is hand painted. Come take a look with me at these 7 different ways to use hand painted tiles in your home.
1. To Create a Visual One-of-a-Kind Work of Art with a Mural
Painting murals and scenes on stone is as old as history, with the first examples showing up in caves like Altamira, in Spain, and Lascaux, in France. While these paintings, mainly focused on large game animals, you can almost imagine a gathering of tribal people telling stories sitting in the caves, decorated with stone paintings, visible only with their nearby torches, like some ancient living room. The fact that they’ve lasted this long, proves that when you put up a stone tile mural, it’s going to have tremendous staying power. This makes it ideal for a place like within a shower stall or above a fireplace, as neither heat nor water will damage it. The colors are far more dramatic and brighter these days, making it easy to even add colorful modern still life's to any wall in the kitchen too.
2. To Decoratively Protect Surfaces with Artistic Designs
Certain areas are hard on the wallpaper or regular paint, like above a countertop or range. The kitchen can be a hot, greasy area, that degrades other types of surfaces, but custom stone tile can weather this harsh environment easily. Putting up a beautiful, hand painted, fruit mural behind the range doesn’t just give the space a vintage look, it also protects areas that are exposed to more wear and tear. Stone tiles can be travertine, tumbled marble, or other natural stones, with alkyds as a painting medium or baked enamel paints. Tumbled marble tiles are not as smooth as other stone tiles, but many art projects make use of the pits and imperfections to give a mural an “Old World” charm. Areas around the pool need to have tiles too, so why not add some hand painted stone tiles to protect and enliven these spaces also?
3. To Frame or Accentuate Specific Areas of Your Home
A frame around a painting is the finishing touch on any masterpiece. Similarly, you can use hand painted stone tiles to create decorative borders for any area in the home. You can not only add a focal painting on stone above a stove range, but you can also frame it. However, if you tend to favor less art, you can still use decorative borders all by themselves to add extra gilding to a space without overpowering it. For instance, if you would like some painted fruit in your kitchen, but not an entire wall of it, you can still get hand painted border pieces that give you just that light touch added to your wall space lining the countertop and above the range.
Mosaic Border - View Details>>
4. To Create an Added Window View
Some bathrooms and windows can be dark or lack windows. One way to fool the eye and make the space seem even larger is to add a “window view” without the actual window. Hand painted stone works of art can easily provide the backdrop for a new “window” anywhere you choose. Use a balcony view theme, to add depth to a bar area, and make you feel like you are sitting perched looking out on the hills of Tuscany, Italy, in your own private villa. If you use an alcove as the outline of an already established window frame, adding a landscape on it, provides the same visual trick.
Mosaic Murals - View Details>>
5. To Capture a Memory or Mood
The art of putting more than one color on a tile (as in a painting) originated in China, but was spread throughout the world when the Persians conquered Timur and were exposed to the Chinese pottery technique. Once the ancient people understood how to use more than one color in a tile, it opened up their creative ability to create any theme they desired. People often use paintings in particular spaces to create a mood, like adding a Parisian outdoor cafe to a dining nook or kitchen. If they’ve actually visited specific areas, they might decide to celebrate their travels in their luxury homes by adding scenes reminiscent of their travels, like a walk along a French seaside view.
6. To Bring the Outdoors In
Other homeowners just want to bring the outdoors in and opt for large landscapes as focal points around the home. Stone tiled handiwork that focuses on country scenes with rolling hills and paths can help to draw the eye out of the vicinity of the kitchen and into a more expansive view. Add a few mountains in the distance, and you’re likely to forget you’re actually living in the city.
7. To Celebrate Life and Living
Painted tiles can include any theme, from an animal (as in the cave paintings) to still life's and landscapes. Basically, anything that you want to celebrate is available to be put on stone tiles when you order custom hand painted tile work. Landscapes are perfect for creating moods, while thematic still lives can provide a color palette scheme and focal point for the rest of the room and tie it all together.
Medallions and Murals - View Details>>