Colors for Painting a Gothic Style Bedroom for a Tween Girl

White

• The primary colors associated with the Gothic revival movement are black, white and gray. Black doesn't work well for bedroom wall and ceiling colors, and white alone looks anything but goth. The answer is to think in terms of shades of gray. The underlying tone of the Gothic theme is old, decaying stonework. To achieve this look, paint your entire room white, which gives you a good base to work from.

Gray

• Look at the room in terms of vignettes. Each wall should be bright near the center and become darker and darker as you near the corners. To achieve this, use the same white paint you started with and add black to the paint in the tray, starting with small amounts. Create a center oval of whiteness, and brush increasingly gray strokes toward the corners. Allow some of the white to show through, and blend your paint so that it appears to fade or grow dirty.

Black

• By the time you reach the corners, the last few inches of paint will be pure black. Repeat this treatment for all of the walls and the ceiling. After the main painting is finished, use an old toothbrush and flick black specks onto the walls to add to the dirty effect, keeping the flecks random. Allow the paint to dry. Now the time comes to age your trim work. The main colors used with goth tend to be purple, blue or red. Select one for your accent color.

Adding Color

• Pick a version of your color that you feel is strongly Goth. For a red this would be more of a claret shade; for blue, think in terms of ghostly fog; and for purple, imagine a rotting Victorian mansion color. Paint your door and trim the solid color. Add drops of black to the pan, and mix up the color so you can distress the door and trim. You'll want to drag the darker shade along the grooves in the door panels or trim. Make the door and trim look a little smudged and dirty with just small areas of the original bright color shining through. You can hang curtains that look like torn stockings, and draw lines on your windows to look like broken glass using glass paint pens. The effect will be very Gothic and ready for the gargoyles.