Surprisingly brilliant home decorating and paint colour hacks people swear by—even when they probably shouldn’t have worked.
A little while ago, I asked on Instagram:
“What’s your most unhinged decorating or paint colour hack—the one you’d never recommend, but it actually worked?”
And let me tell you, the comments were absolute gold. Some of these were so creative I actually laughed out loud. Others made me think, Why didn’t I try that first?!
Because here’s the thing: not every design decision is made with a perfect Pinterest board and a plan. Sometimes, you’re just trying to make dated grout disappear—or match your dog’s hair. And somehow, against all odds… it works.
So today, I’m rounding up some of my favourite hacks that shouldn’t have worked—but totally did:
My Own Wild Design Hack? I Matched the Paint to the Dirty Grout
When I was a brand new colour consultant, I once matched a bathroom paint colour to the dirty grout (probably chose a green beige or a green grey which is what dirty white grout looks like). There was nothing else in the room to inspire the colour—so I matched the grout perfectly. And honestly? I hope they never cleaned it.
Here’s a few more that caught my team’s eye!
Colour Matching… But Make It Questionable
- “I matched my floor tile to the colour of my golden retrievers’ fur. Now the dog hair just blends right in!”
- “I repainted the flowers on a hand-me-down sofa to match my colour scheme. Yes, I painted upholstery—and it turned out beautifully.”
- “I brought a kitchen drawer to the paint store to match the yellowed cabinets. Then I repainted the whole house a soft creamy white. It worked like a charm.”
DIY Fixes That Deserve a Trophy
- “I changed the colour of my grout with a marker. It’s held up for years.”
- “I used a fake tan mitt to paint my stair banister. Don’t ask me why—but it was perfect for the job!”
- “We couldn’t get a 12-inch wallpaper border off the walls, so my husband framed it with trim and we painted it like it was supposed to be there. Genius, honestly.”
Paint Decisions You Won’t Find on This Blog!
- “Painted kitchen ceiling in glossy rose-red. The cabinet lighting made it glow—very 80s Chinese-restaurant-meets-Terence Conran.”
- “I painted burgundy over our orange brick wall. My husband thought I was crazy—but it completely transformed the space.”
- “I color-matched my toilet and painted the entire bathroom to match. It sounds ridiculous, but it worked!”
When Budget Sparks the Best Ideas
- “We couldn’t afford to replace our dated grey sink, tub, and toilet—so I painted the walls a darker grey to make the fixtures disappear. It totally worked.”
- “Instead of removing wallpaper that was glued to unprimed sheetrock, I just painted over it. It’s still holding up perfectly.”
- “I faux-painted a marble backsplash because we couldn’t afford tile. It took 90 hours and nearly broke me, but the result was beautiful.”
Ok, amazing! I had my grey cast stone fireplace hand painted to look like calacatta gold marble, but I had an artist do it 😄 She did an incredible job.
Do you have an unhinged decorating hack?
So, what’s your most questionable but brilliant design decision? Tell me in the comments below.
I promise—no judgment, just applause. Sometimes, inspiration strikes in the most unexpected places… and the results are better than anything you could have planned.
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When we moved into our first house, a 1950’s bungalow, we removed the high low shag carpet from the entryway and family room area to reveal the concrete sub floor. We didn’t have the budget to buy new flooring so I used Benjamin Moore porch paint and painted the concrete to look like large 3’x 3’ stone slabs set on the diagonal. It held up amazingly. Years later when we sold the house I had to tell perspective buyers it wasn’t travertine, but paint. Our house sold for over asking price the first day on the market.
I have 80’s Formica with the charming haha black edge in my bathrooms. I dabbed primer than paint on those edges with a foam brush and it made all the difference in the world! Did it almost two years ago and it’s held up perfectly.
I painted over wallpaper over 20 years ago because it was very thin paper that I knew would shred to take off. I made sure the seams were smooth and then painted the room. You saw the slight texture through the paint, but it was actually cool.
I also painted the backsplash in a hex tile stencil because I couldn’t swing paying for tile. It was so pretty that I painted the marble surround of the fireplace in the same hex tile stencil in an enamel paint. It held up perfectly. Replacing the marble surround would have been quite expensive.
I’ve tried many things with paint, and it all depends on the prep and the type of paint you use.
Ok, this is a temporary measure, so really no judgement please! Our cats badly scratched one of our living room sofas, and I got the closest color match of duct tape I could find and covered the scratched area with that! It’s way less of an eyesore now and a bonus is they stopped scratching it because of the tape. Now I can spend my money on other parts of the house that need it more urgently. I may do some kind of visible mending with embroidered patches, but this was the quick and easy fix, lol.
My favorites from this post are matching the yellowed kitchen drawer to make it look on purpose/disappear, and the stuck wallpaper border trimmed with molding and painted. Paint is sorta magical, isn’t it- a great friend of those strapped for cash but willing to put in some creativity and elbow grease. I wanted a very large wall-filling art piece and couldn’t spring for a $300 print, so I painted an abstract on a cotton canvas curtain panel from the thrift store with leftover house paint and craft paint, stretched in a giant $30 ikea frame. It’s had a prominent spot in 2 homes for the last 6 years and gets frequent compliments.
We did also did porch paint on our upstairs plywood subfloors after removing ancient carpeting and it’s great!
Painting grout (using special grout recoloring stuff) is tedious but transformed our pale beige tile from a high contrast grid to a monochromatic background.
Thrifted a wonderful, handmade, large clay base lamp that was painted dull avocado green… repaint with soft black topped with a diluted whitewash for aging and it looks like a high end piece.
I could go on!
Paint, zip ties, mirrors, and audacity go a long way. I moved into a house with ugly 80’s tile countertops and zero budget- got a bunch of cheap vintage marble slabs and placed them on top. Now I have marble countertops. Got vintage Woodard iron patio furniture with some welding missing ; fastened them up with zip ties and painted over them. My bathroom has a long and horrible blue formica countertop atop a too-narrow 1970’s vanity (with splatter paint pink and blue walls!!) I painted the vanity and the lower half of the walls Ben Moore Timson Green, , the top half of the room Ben Moore Alabaster, changed the vanity handles, and added a tension rod with a vintage blue chintz curtain across the bottom of the wide counter. Now the strange proportions look charming and the blue formica is unnoticeable. Just put a big marble table top on a Home Goods tulip base for a Saarinen dupe…
Paint and audacity is the recipe for fun and excitement in decorating! You are my kind of people. 😉
In 1995, I put subway tile in a shower and added black trim tile 18” from the ceiling.
What I (duh!) had not counted on was the white grout would also be between the black tiles; it was so distracting and made the border tile look like a negative of teeth..!
Model airplane paint to the rescue! It had a glissy finish that blended with the tile and the small brush that came attached to the lid of the paint jar was perfect for applying between the tiles.
We moved in the ‘00’s but the house was on the market two years ago…and I was able to see that the bathroom was unchanged (thank you Zillow!) and the trim looked fine
Love the responses. I had to chuckle when I read about the dog hair. I, too, have matched dog hair to my floors. Now I am without dogs. I match my graying/white hair to my bathroom tile floors. It really does work.
I don’t have anything that unhinged.
My original 1927 fireplace had been painted white. I stripped the paint to reveal the tile but didn’t try that hard to get the paint off the dark grout. The painted grout makes my tile look freshly restored and looks better than previous listing pics!
Forty years ago, when I was a teenager, my Mom picked a yellow Labrador rather than a black one so that the dog would match the flooring. At the time, thought that was interesting. When I grew up and had my own home to clean, I realized her brilliance!😂
I recruited my mom to help me ‘build’ a temporary wall between our living room and tiny dining ‘room’. We didn’t need a formal dining area, and I needed a work at home office. We used 2 4×8 rigid foam board insulation boards, fabric wrapped them in a solid mauve fabric (early 90’s!), duct taped them together, and friction fit them in the opening. The fabric coordinated with the colors in the living room, and I was able to use the office side as a tack board. Visitors to our home had no idea, unless we told them! It served me well, with great acoustical properties for 6 years!
We put in a beautiful tile off white backsplash but I had to order each piece glazed on no edges, just the top edge, L or R side or combinations. A lot of work to figure that out! But a few edges cut during install were not glazed of course & they showed. In desperation I bought matching nail polish & applied several coats. Worked perfectly!
In the 2010’s I wanted new linen-looking curtains for our living room and dining room, but didn’t want to invest a lot of money since we weren’t planning to stay in that home much longer. I bought black curtain rods and rings and used painter’s drop cloths for the curtains. I went to many stores to get drop cloths in the color and texture I preferred! No sewing, I just folded over the top edge to get the right length and clipped onto the rings. Hung the rods high and wide and it looked great!
We moved into a house with wallpaper that had a couple small white areas where the patterned part of the paper had been torn off. I got out my daughter’s giant box of crayons, chose matching colors, and carefully drew the pattern in the missing areas. Disguised it perfectly until we were ready to replace it.
In 1992 we had a new house in Whitehorse, Yukon, and rented out the family room as a BnB. The attached toilet/sink room was only 3×6′ (SO Small!). We couldn’t put in a normal ceiling because of a plumbing pipe in the space, and a flat ceiling would have been at about 6.5′. I painted a piece of 1/8″ hardboard with sky and clouds, and my husband put the 2 pieces in as an arch – in the middle it was almost normal height.
Because the room was wallpapered in a small floral, I took 2 strips of wallpapered cardboard and fit it over the seam and the other 2/3 down, so it looked like an arbor.
It was a very cool tiny bath, and without the plumbing challenge, we would never have improved the “feel” with an arched ceiling.
I saved for years and bought my first condo in downtown Toronto just after my 30th birthday. I had a small budget to decorate. After changing the kitchen hardware, I spent hours scrubbing the grout in my kitchen and hallway marble. Much impoved but the hood fan in kitchen of my open concept layout was very dated with black and metallic accents. One day determined to make it better I examined it more closely. I pulled off the knobs and started removing every sticker on the unit. When I was done the two black knobs were the only thing left and the unit was one solid off white colour. It looked way better!! Unfortunately the paint had faded so you could tell where the stickers had been but was still much better than before.
It became my party trick that people would get me to improve the hood fan in other units in our building. I’m sure I must have modified over 15 of these things at least. Someone would say, let her fix your hood fan, she can do it in minutes. Those things were sharp, I had to be careful,but no one was ever disappointed with the results. It just toned it down so it disappeared more into the overall aesthetic of the room. Win!
“We couldn’t get a 12-inch wallpaper border off the walls, so my husband framed it with trim and we painted it like it was supposed to be there. Genius, honestly.”
OMG I think you have revealed why there’s an unexplained piece of trim 12” below the ceiling of one of our bedrooms.