And since I'm on a roll with these painting stuff and hey, it might give @KMARINO some decorating ideas... here's my room with a super simple but different technique:
Notice the striped wall. It's actually just one color! First, I painted the whole wall with 2 coats of flat paint. Then I taped up 1-foot sections and painted it with one coat of the same color paint but in gloss. And that's the result! Super simple. Oh, pardon the mess - we were in the middle of decorating this room when the picture was taken.
Yes! She's quite talented. She painted the entire wall red, then she free-hand brushed the black rectangles to look like brick. Another friend of mine copied the technique but made stone slabs instead of brick using cream-color base then free-hand brushed thin-edged craggy rectangles with light brown. I don't have a picture of it though.
She moved out of that apartment long time ago and moved to a house. She's the one I told you about that put patterned wallpaper on the wall and painted over it. I found a picture of it:
The area rug is the basis of the room design. If you look closely at the red rectangles on the wall, you see a swirl pattern that match the design of the rug. That's the embossing of the wallpaper that shows up. Very subtle but it pops out when viewed with the area rug. When she bought the wallpaper, I was like, "uhm, that will NOT look good - it doesn't match!" because the colors of the paper was completely psychedelic... like puked out lava lamps. I didn't know she was going to paint over it. By the way, she did this wall by first painting the entire wall white. Then we taped up the wall to form the rectangles (have to use the green painters tape also called "frog tape", not the blue painters tape), then we wallpapered some of the rectangles, then we painted over each rectangle one by one. When we pulled out the tape, this is the result! It looked really cool.
it! Still wouldnt do it myself cuz well the thought of having to be perfect scares me and havent ever done the taping off like this but I LOVE it! Also you are very nice to let your kids paint with you, I am not that kind of mama. lmao. I paint while they sleep either late at night or at 3 in the morning. The only guaranteed time I have to myself. 
Not to sabatoge Kelly's thread...but for @anatess .
Notice that the ceiling is a couple shades darker than the darker wall color. I like the look of darker ceilings. most of our rooms have darker ceilings than walls and it 'works'. Believe it or not it actually helps the rooms seem larger.
