Custom Decorative Painting

Inside Out Painting does custom and decorative finishes for homes in Denville and across Morris County: the work that gives a room depth and character instead of one flat color on four walls.

Which finishes Inside Out Painting does

• Layered and textured finishes
• Feature walls
• Detail work on trim, doors and built-in woodwork
• Custom finishes on furniture

Say decorative painting and a lot of people picture a mural, or a sponged wall from twenty years ago. Most of this work is quieter than that, and it’s normal interior painting with a different end in mind: the finish is part of how the room looks, not just its background.

Featured on HGTV’s “Color Splash”

Inside Out Painting has been featured on HGTV’s “Color Splash,” the show hosted by David Bromstad. The company’s own account of it says it was the painting company used on the New Jersey season, chosen from hundreds of New Jersey painting companies that applied. The video is on the Color Splash feature page.

Can I see samples first?

A finish is hard to judge from a description. Call or email to ask about the finishes we offer and to see samples of our work. The gallery above is our own project photos, which is a start.

Choosing a finish

Three things usually decide which finish suits a room:

Light. The same finish looks different on a north-facing wall and a south-facing one, and different again at night under lamps. A finish with real depth can go muddy in a dim room, and a subtle one can disappear in a bright one.

Scale. A treatment that works on one fireplace wall can be overwhelming across four. Scale is usually what separates a finish that looks like someone chose it from one that’s just too much.

What’s staying. Floors, stone, countertops and cabinetry aren’t being replaced, so they set the colors a finish has to live with. That narrows the choice more than people expect, and usually for the better.

One thing worth knowing before the work starts: a thin glaze or a layered finish can emphasize what’s underneath it. Patched areas flash, roller marks from an old job catch the light, and dents show more clearly under two tones than under one flat color, so the prep matters more here than on a straight repaint.

Decorative work as part of a bigger job

Decorative finishes often make more sense alongside a wider repaint than on their own. A feature wall only works next to the three walls around it, and picked-out trim has to sit with the rest of the woodwork. If the room is getting repainted anyway, that’s usually the time to do it. Inside Out Painting does both, so the decorative work and the wider interior painting job can be talked through together.

Common questions

Do you do decorative finishes on furniture?

Yes. Custom finishes on furniture are part of this service, alongside the work on walls and woodwork.

Is decorative painting only for traditional or formal rooms?

No. A finish can be chosen to look like texture rather than decoration, which suits a lot of modern rooms. The approach changes. The service doesn’t.

Which rooms is this usually done in?

Decorative finishes are most often used in the rooms people linger in or that visitors see first: living rooms, dining rooms, entryways and stairwells, bedrooms. In kitchens and baths it’s usually the woodwork and trim.

Read more

What sets decorative painting apart from standard interior painting · Decorative painting compared with wallpaper · Popular decorative painting techniques for 2026 homes