How to Paint Camouflage on a Wall

Add an outdoors-inspired look to a bedroom or man cave by painting a camouflage pattern on the wall, mimicking a favorite camo pattern or making up your own. Paint the accent colors with a paintbrush for a bold, basic look, or stylize and blend colors with sponges, glazes and stencils or stamps for a completely custom appearance.

Dust the wall thoroughly from the top down before painting; otherwise your paint finish may end up with clumps or stray bits of dust in it. Protect the edges of the ceiling and baseboards or floor with painter's tape, as well as any other areas you do not wish to paint. Place a dropcloth on the floor in front of the wall to catch stray paint spatter.

If the wall is a bright or bold color such as red or purple, paint it with a coat of a quality primer or a white or tan paint; otherwise, the original wall color may show through your camouflage design.

Camouflage doesn't have to be green, brown and tan. Mimic your favorite camouflage style, such as a desert or woodland color scheme, or come up with a "fantasy" style in shades of blue, gray, orange or purple, for instance.

Select either three or four main colors for your camouflage design; then paint the walls with a base coat of the lightest of the colors. Select a shade of tan as the base wall color for a woodland or desert camouflage design. The base color requires more paint than the accent shades in your camouflage design.

Pour one of the remaining camouflage paint colors into a disposable container or paint tray and paint random blobs on the wall, studying images of actual camouflage to get a general vision for your design.

If you prefer not to freehand the designs in paint, sketch random curvy shapes on the wall in chalk; then go back and fill some of them in with one of the remaining paint colors.

Use the one or two additional paint colors to create additional random shapes on the wall, some of them overlapping other dried colors. Add a few black or dark thick lines near the edges of some of the paint blobs to emulate the look of shadows.

If you prefer a soft, subtle look rather than large, solid color blobs on the wall, apply each of the accent camouflage colors with a sea sponge rather than a paintbrush.

Do not wait for one color to dry before working with the next; allow the sponge to blend and soften the paint colors as one mixes slightly into the next.

For a stylized look, use stencils of plant shapes such as leaves and tall grasses, or dip actual leaves and grasses into paint to use as stamps on the walls in some areas. If the look is too crisp and sharp, go back over the shapes with a secondary color or the base paint color, thinned with a clear glaze, to create a hazy effect.