Drywall Texture Matching in Phoenix: Orange-Peel, Knockdown and Skip-Trowel

The three Phoenix textures

• Orange-peel is a fine, even bumpiness, like the skin of an orange. It's sprayed on and left alone. Most 1990s and 2000s tract homes have it.
• Knockdown starts the same way, sprayed on, then the peaks get flattened with a wide knife while it's wet. The result is a mottled, flattened pattern. It's the most common texture in newer Valley homes.
• Skip-trowel is applied by hand with a trowel, leaving irregular patches of compound with smooth areas between them. It's heavier, more varied, and common in custom and older homes.

There are others: sand finish, splatter, and the heavy hand textures in some 1970s homes. We match those too.

How a texture gets matched

The compound is thinned and sprayed over the patch, or troweled on for skip-trowel, and feathered into the wall around it so there's no visible edge. Knockdown gets flattened at the right moment: too soon and it smears, too late and it doesn't flatten. The size of the pattern, how heavy it is, and how much of the wall it covers all have to match the original. We test on a scrap before spraying the wall.

Once the texture is dry, it gets primed. Primer is what makes new texture and old texture take paint the same way. Skip the primer and the patch shows as a dull spot even if the texture is perfect.

Fixing texture that doesn't match

A common call we get is a patch somebody else did. The texture is too fine, too coarse, too heavy, or stops in a hard line. Those get sanded back, retextured with the right pattern feathered wider, and primed again. Occasionally a bad patch is easier to cut out and redo than to fix.

Retexturing a whole wall or ceiling

Sometimes matching one spot isn't practical: a ceiling with ten patches, a wall where the old texture was sanded off, or a room where you want to change the texture. Then the whole surface gets skim-coated or retextured so it's uniform. That's a bigger job and the quote says so. Ceilings are the usual case, because the light across them shows every difference.

Smooth walls

A few Phoenix homes have smooth walls, and a patch on a smooth wall has its own challenge: there's no texture to hide behind, so the patch has to be dead flat and feathered wide. Smooth-wall patches get more coats and more sanding than textured ones.

Problems we fix on this page

• Patch doesn't match the orange-peel texture
• Patch doesn't match the knockdown texture
• Want a smooth wall finish
• Ceiling texture flaking
• Texture patchy after repairs
• Santa Fe texture cracking
• Smooth wall finish showing patches
• Skip-trowel texture doesn't match
• Bullnose corners cracking
• Lace texture damaged
• Ceiling knockdown texture falling

How it starts

Send a photo of the wall from a few feet back in good light so the texture shows, and a close-up. Tell us whether it's a new patch or one that already shows. We send back a fixed price, you say go, and Levi shows up to do it.