We have been working on updating the design at Motiv one of Santa Cruz, CA’s hottest nightclubs. We will reveal the complete redesign shortly, but for now we thought we would share a new painting technique we mastered this past week. Metallic pin stripes!
We had a large wall that needed some visual interest and wallpaper just was not going to be durable enough. (Some crazy stuff can happen in a dance club after midnight!) We searched hundreds of commercial grade wallpapers, but we just couldn’t find anything that was stylistically appropriate and durable enough for the crowd this spot draws. This is when we decided on metallic paint pin stripes.
Once we got the hang of it, it actually was pretty easy. We decided that we wanted our stripes 12″ apart. We measured this out on the wall making a pencil mark every 12″ to ensure it would all line up the way we wanted. Then using our trusty laser level we marked a line from ceiling to floor with pencil.
Then we ran painter’s tape alone each side of our pencil line ensuring the gap between was a consistent width from floor to ceiling. We chose about 1/8 ” width for our stripes.
We repeated this process every 12″ where we had made our original marks. As you will see this got more challenging as we got over the stairs.
YIKES!
We covered all the wall space between the tape with paper and then sprayed the stripes with metallic spray paint. You could roll it with any wall paint but we wanted it to be bright metallic, so we decided to spray it.
We let the paint dry and removed the paper and tape to reveal our perfect metallic stripes.
We did one side silver and one gold.
Sorry about the bad photos, but the sun was blazing through the skylights, which is why the glare is so bad. At night during business hours this looks amazing! I wish we could show you the whole room, but you are going to have to wait for the final reveal to see it in its entirety. There are some finishing touches still to happen on the woodwork in the next few weeks then we will post the complete before and after.
Now don’t be scared…go pin stripe something!
