When Kirkwood-resident Marietta Caiarellii renovated her orange-and-white Formica kitchen 15 years ago, she chose a neutral paint color for the walls and extended the shade into the adjacent hallways, dining and living rooms. The beige hue with a hint of pink undertones was the right choice for her small cottage, she says, but something was missing.
“I just thought the paint looked a little dull,” says Caiarelli. The living and dining rooms, which had window treatments at the time, also tended to be a little dark.
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At Reineke Decorating Center in Des Peres, Caiarelli learned about a product from Benjamin Moore called Studio Finishes Glitter Effect, a top coat that’s applied over a base paint color for an iridescent shimmer effect. At the time it was new to the store and Caiarelli, who has a soft spot for anything shiny, was intrigued. “I brought it home and showed it to Danny [Kunst, her longtime house painter]. He tried it, and it was like magic.”
Kunst, a professional painter for 25 years, had never worked with a glittery overlay prior to his experience at Caiarelli’s house. “I was excited to try it. I just had to do a little bit of research about how to actually apply it,” he says. The key is to strive for uniformity, spreading the product evenly across the wall, he says. Working in small sections, Kunst rolls the product onto the wall and “back rolls” it off to avoid the appearance of straight lines. To “be with the product,” he prefers to get up close to it, climbing a ladder instead of using a roll pull. By shining a light from a corner and across the wall, he can see if he’s missed a spot and adjust accordingly.
“Depending on the light, you see just a faint shimmer,” says Caiarelli, noting the glitter’s silver, green, and trace amounts of red. “It’s very subtle.”
Over the past 20 years, decorative painter Tim Glastetter has been hired by clients for a variety of projects involving the application of glitter and metallic finishes to interior walls. “This is one of those things that’s kind of coming back,” he says. “The last time I used it, I was using Boero and it was a metallic grit, basically glitter suspended in the paint.”
According to Glastetter, there are two ways to work with glitter. One is to use a pre-mixed product–Glastetter likes Sparkle Coat by Faux Effects; the other is to mix mica powder into a clear coat or gel. “I find that I have better luck this way because it’s easier for me to control [the application],” he says. In projects that call for a sparing amount of glitter, Glastetter purchases the glitter straight from a hobby shop and applies it to a wall or embossed stencil using a flat sponge dipped into a pie pan.
“More and more, I’m working on hand-painted wallpaper,” he says. “Sometimes, on those finishes, they like a sparkle in them, like a mica. And I’ll trade it out for hints of glitter here and there, or gold leaf.”
If you’re curious to try glitter at home, a powder room or maybe up a staircase could be a good place to start. But, if you’re anything like Caiarelli, you may find yourself wanting to apply it everywhere, including the ceiling in the dining room.
“If you have a chance to do it, do it because it just makes you smile,” she says. “It’s sunny and it’s nice, and it doesn’t scream at you when you see it.”
