How to Skip Trowel Texture to Make Your Space Stand Out

How to Skip Trowel Texture With a Trowel

As the name suggests, a trowel is one of the most common ways to apply skip trowel texture to walls and ceilings.

1. Prep Your Drywall Surface

   After taping and smoothing the drywall, remove all dust, debris, and moisture.

   Tip

   You can cover the tape with mud before applying skip trowel texture or attempt to cover the tape lines with the skip trowel texture. The choice mostly comes down to preference and determining which method is easiest for you.

2. Prep Your Joint Compound

   In a separate bucket, add a small amount of water to your joint compound and mix using a drywall knife or a drill fitted with a paddle.

   If necessary, gradually add more water until you reach the consistency of thick pancake batter.

3. Put Joint Compound on Hawk

   Put some joint compound on your hawk. You want enough to last you several minutes, but not too much, or it may be difficult to keep it from running off the sides.

   Tip

   Mixing your drywall mud too thin will make it impossible to use with a hawk, which is necessary for use with a trowel. You can always add water to make it thinner, so start thick and add more water if you have to.

4. Spread Joint Compound on the Drywall

   Put a small amount of joint compound on the trowel and press it flat against the drywall. Use a sharp, sweeping motion to spread the joint compound across the surface.

   The key is to spread a small amount of joint compound across a large surface. By holding the trowel flat against the surface and using a small amount of joint compound, it will skip across the drywall. This will cause the joint compound to stick in some spots while leaving the drywall exposed in others.

   Rather than going back and covering the bare drywall left behind, move to a new spot. Continue this method until the entire surface is covered with a randomized, loose pattern of bare and covered spots.

5. Experiment With Application Technique

   As mentioned above, there's an art to applying skip trowel texture. Experiment with your grip, trowel position, and application direction as you're first starting to develop a muscle memory that achieves your desired texture.

   Tip

   Some people find it easiest to apply the mud in random directions. Others prefer to apply the mud in one direction, and then come back through in a perpendicular direction to knock it down and even out the pattern.

6. Fix Any Mistakes

   Take a step back and look for any spots that look unnatural. Yes, the goal of skip trowel texture is to create an intentionally imperfect surface, but you must also stick to a loose pattern of ridges and valleys.

   Taking a step back to look at the overall surface will allow you to better see any spots that stick out among the rest. These spots may be revealing too much bare drywall or may have too much joint compound.

   For bare spots, you can often just dab some mud in place to match the surroundings. For spots that are too heavily coated, it may be easiest to scrape off the joint compound and reapply.

How to Skip Trowel Texture With a Standard Joint Knife

If you don't have a trowel, you can apply skip trowel texture to drywall using a standard drywall taping knife.

1. Prep Your Drywall Surface

   After taping and smoothing the drywall, remove all dust, debris, and moisture.

2. Prep Your Joint Compound

   In a separate bucket, add a small amount of water to your joint compound and mix using a drywall knife or a drill fitted with a paddle. If necessary, gradually add more water until you reach the consistency of thick pancake batter.

3. Fill the Mud Pan

   Transfer some of the thinned joint compound into a drywall mud pan.
   

4. Choose Your Drywall Knife

   Start with the widest drywall knife you have and work your way toward a narrower one if the widest one isn't comfortable.

   Tip

   When applying skip trowel texture, part of the learning curve is learning which tools work best for you.

   
   

   Some people may prefer a traditional trowel, while others may find that a standard taping knife works best. Even still, the style and size of the knife may affect your ability to create the texture you're after.

5. Put Drywall Mud on the Knife's Edge

   Dip the drywall knife into the joint compound so that just the edge has a small, even amount of drywall mud on it.

6. Spread Joint Compound on the Drywall

   Apply the mud to the drywall surface by holding the blade nearly parallel to the surface and holding light pressure against the surface. It may take some practice to figure out how much pressure to put on the knife, but the goal is for the edge of the knife to skip along the surface, creating random ridges and valleys as it moves along.

7. Experiment With Application Technique

   Experiment with your joint compound application technique, just as you would if using a standard trowel. Beyond the tools being used and the corresponding application adjustments, the skip trowel texture application process is generally the same.

How to Finish and Paint Textured Drywall

Once the skip trowel textured joint compound has completely dried, cover the entire surface with paint. Painting textured drywall is much like painting standard drywall. However, it's wise to start with inexpensive drywall primer that's tinted to about 50% of your final color. This is because drywall and joint compound soaks up a lot of paint. It's better to let it soak up primer that's around $10 to $15 a gallon instead of paint that could exceed $50 a gallon.

Additionally, applying primer evens out the surface, allowing you to better see your skip trowel texture and determine whether you should add or remove any joint compound before applying your final coat of paint.