How to Faux Paint a Dark Window

Find an image of a window at night and print a high resolution color photograph of it. Use this as your inspiration as you paint the window. Draw a few studies -- practice drawings -- of the window before proceeding to the next step.

Draw the guidelines of the window on the wall with a pencil. Use a ruler to outline the straight edges of the window.

Mix dark blue and black paint together and paint the night sky, visible through the trim of the window. Use a flat acrylic paintbrush.

Paint the base color of the trim of the window. The color of the trim will depend on your preference -- whether it is white, brown or some other color. Use a flat acrylic paintbrush.

Paint any details you wish to see on the trim, such as wood grains or shadows. If you want to see a shadow of the trim on the wall, projected from some light-source inside, you'll need to establish where that light-source is -- this can be made up or real. The shadows will fall on the wall on the opposite side of the trim from the light source. Wood grains will need to be painted with a detail brush using darker brown than the base color you painted in Step 4. The photograph that you pick should have a wood grain trim for your reference, but if not, then you will need to find a sample of wood for help.

Paint details in the image you see out the window. For stars, use a pointed detail brush to dot the sky with white dots. For an ordinarily green landscape, mix the green with blue and a little brown or black, to make the landscape features appropriately dark. Wait for the paint to dry before proceeding to the next step.

Paint curtains over the windows in whatever fashion found in your sample photograph. This will obscure part of the view out the window, so be sure that the paint is dry before doing this. Use a flat paintbrush to paint panels of cloth over the windows, and darken the color of the curtains at the folds. Blend the shadowed folds with the rest of the curtains using a dry brush to mix the two colors on the wall.