Vasari Venetian Plaster

Lime Wash Application


The ideal coating for Marmorino Venetian Plaster


SAFETY FIRST: ALWAYS WEAR LATEX GLOVES AND GOGGLES WHEN WORKING WITH VENETIAN PLASTER. USE DUST MASK OR RESPIRATOR WHEN WORKING WITH DRY GOODS.

 

Lime Wash is ideal for coating Marmorino or other aggregate type stuccos and plasters, such as cement or lime stuccos. It is used as an enhancing coat of color. Lime Wash can give soft translucent color variation to plaster, or it can be applied to where the original color of the plaster is radically changed. Although it does not seal like an oil-based sealer, acrylic, or wax, it does add a layer of protection. Lime Wash can be polished to a soft rich shine or can be left as flat, natural finish.. It can be used like a glaze, leaving pockets of color in rougher patches of the underlying plaster, or can also be used as a medium for murals. Visit the Lime Wash Gallery for samples and ideas.

Lime Wash is traditionally applied with a brush, but can also be ragged on or even sprayed on with an airless sprayer (although not highly recommended). Do not use a roller. It will look like you've painted squares. The biggest trick to lime washing is to keep the wall wet so that the lime wash remains workable. If you let the wall dry too much, you can have a harder time getting rid of the brush strokes.

If you use Lime Wash on regular paint, you will need at least four or five coats. This is because the wash is thin. You should also have a flat sheen as the base coat. On regular walls, lime is often more prone to water marks than if used on Marmorino.

Materials needed:

-Spray bottle or sprayer machine (like a paint sprayer), preferably a large one that's easy to spray. Good water sprayers are easily found at garden supply stores.
-Two 6" wide brushes. You can use natural or synthetic bristled brushes, but make sure you get a decent quality brush so the bristles don't pull out.
-Masking materials
-Rags

When lime washing, you're applying very thin layers of lime wash. Some if not most areas will reveal the base coat of plaster that you're covering. The more layers you apply of the same color, the less busy or dramatic the walls will look. Three or more layers of the same color (each one drying before the next) will produce a monotone colored wall, with very subtle variation. This is a fine look by itself and when touching up it's very forgiving. Even multiple layers of pure white lime wash (untinted) create a very refined look. If you put two layers of different colors over each other, red and blue for example, you will get an almost purple color. Brown and yellow will make a golden shade of those colors. You can apply the wash in isolated areas for dramatic effect.

The two most important things to keep in mind when lime washing are:

  1. Keep the wall wet or very damp without streaks of water running down the wall when applying the wash.
  2. Consistently feather out brush marks that your wet brush makes.

Application:

  1. Over a 2 to 4-foot section of Marmorino or other lime based stucco, spray water. The wall will immediately absorb the first few sprays of water. Spray enough on the wall to make it wet rather than just damp. You'll notice that the wall absorbs the water unevenly.
  2. With one of your brushes, which we will call the 'wet brush', apply a thin or medium layer of lime paint. It doesn't have to look good at this point, just spread some over the whole area. You can do this unevenly or uniformly depending on the style you're trying to create.
  3. When the lime wash that you applied starts to get absorbed by the wall, when it's between being very wet and damp, take your other 'dry brush' (with softer bristles, preferably), and feather out any brush marks that the wet brush made. You can do this gently or harder. You will get areas that you can no longer feather out because the area has dried too much. When this happens, spray the wall with water to make the lime paint workable again. You can even scrub out those areas vigorously with your dry brush, as if it were an eraser. You can play endlessly with your spray bottle and dry brush. You can create endless effects by continuously rewetting the wall and brushing it out. You can even add other colors of lime wash, feathering them into the first color. While wet, you can even move the wash around with a rag or sponge, much like faux finish glazing. This will leave lime paint only in rougher areas of the plaster. You can unmask when still damp unless you want to add other elements to the wall.
  4. You can finish at step 3, but here are some extras. When dry, you can take #0000 steel wool or 400-600 grit sand paper and polish out the wall, getting rid of any chalky feel to the wall. As with Veneziano and Marmorino, you can polish the wall wet. That is, polish (only with the paper) while spraying water on the wall. Do this when the wall is damp, not soaking wet.
  5. At this point, you can apply sealers or waxes. We have sealers that don't change the colors of the lime wash and we have an enhancing sealer which brings the color back to almost the wet color. Clear wax will just change sheen, not color. Colored waxes isthe thing that can really add depth and color.

As always, test lime wash on a sample board or discreet wall. Lime Wash, like plaster, is easy to apply. You just need a few minutes to get the feel for it. Remember the secret to Lime Wash is keeping the wall wet enough that you can move the paint around in subtle ways.