Boerne Drywall 830-357-7353
Long interior wall finished in knockdown and painted warm off white, late afternoon light raking across it from one side so the flattened plates throw soft shadow the whole length of the run

Drywall Texture in Boerne, TX: Orange Peel, Knockdown and Skip Trowel

Nearly every wall around Boerne has a sprayed finish on it, and matching the one you already have is what keeps a repair from showing.

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Long interior wall finished in knockdown and painted warm off white, late afternoon light raking across it from one side so the flattened plates throw soft shadow the whole length of the run

Why Walls Are Textured in Texas

It's the question we get asked most about this end of the trade, and there's no mystery in it. A flat wall has to be skimmed all over and sanded until nothing catches the light, where a sprayed finish does the same job in one pass off a gun. Boerne Drywall sprays and matches drywall texture in Boerne, TX every week of the year.

Houses here went up quickly and in volume, so the finish that covered a wall in one pass became the normal one. Textured walls stayed normal because they keep on being useful, hiding scuffs, the marks a household puts on a hallway, and the seasonal movement a flat wall would show you.

That matters to you in one practical way. If a repair on your wall is still visible after it was painted, the filling was almost certainly fine, and it's the finish that gave it away.

Which Drywall Texture Is on Your Walls

You don't need the trade names to tell us what you have. A photo taken with a lamp held off to one side says more than any name would, since what we're reading is the shadow the finish throws. Still, it helps to know which family yours is in.

The sprayed textures: orange peel and knockdown

Orange peel is a fine even spatter, about the size of the dimples on an orange, and it's the most common thing on a Boerne wall. Knockdown starts as that same spray and gets a wide blade drawn over it while it's still wet, which flattens the high points into small soft-edged plates. Stand close in low light: if you see little flat islands with shadow between them, yours is knockdown.

The hand-applied textures, and no texture at all

Skip trowel and hand-troweled finishes go on with a blade rather than through a gun, so they're slower and they cost more. Plenty of newer houses around Boerne have no texture at all, and a smooth wall is the most demanding finish to get right, because there's nothing on your wall to hide behind.

Before We Match or Spray a Drywall Texture

Which finish is on your wall now, and whether the whole house carries the same one
How coarse the spatter is, since two orange peel walls can sit a long way apart
Whether it's been painted since it was sprayed, and how many times
How light falls on it, because a wall beside a window gets judged harder than your hallway
Whether what's underneath is flat enough to take the finish you want
How far past a repair the finish has to be carried before nothing catches your eye

Matching a Finish, and Retexturing a Whole Room

Two different jobs get called texture work, and they price nothing alike. One is matching what's already on your wall so a repair disappears into it. The other is retexture: taking a room, or a whole house, to a finish it doesn't have now.

Scrap board leaning against a finished wall with four sprayed test patches of unpainted white finish across it in a row, each a slightly different spatter size, a mud pan on a canvas drop cloth beside it

Matching the texture already on your wall

Nobody can match a finish off a chart, so we do it by testing instead. The gun is a hopper on the end of an air line, and the spray tip sets the size of the spatter. So we spray scrap board two or three ways, let it dry, and hold each one against your wall in the light of that room. Wet texture and dry texture don't look the same, which is why the drying part matters.

Retexturing a room, or taking one flat

A retexture is mostly what happens before the spraying. The old finish gets knocked back, the surface is skimmed flat, and only then does the new one go on. Going the other way, from a textured wall to a smooth one, is the bigger job of the two, since everything on there now has to come off or be buried. A smooth wall also stops hiding things for you afterward, which is worth knowing before you choose one.

Where the Cost of a Drywall Texture Job Goes

Texture is priced by the surface it goes on, and that's your walls and ceilings rather than your floor. What separates two rooms of the same size is what has to happen before any spraying starts, and which finish you've chosen.

What Happens When We Come to Spray Your Walls

A texture job means having people in your house for a day, and it runs in the same order every time, so you'll know what's coming.

  • Everything not being sprayed gets masked: your floors, trim, glass, switches and doorways
  • The surface underneath gets checked and skimmed, because texture follows what it lands on
  • Test sprays go up on scrap board and get held against your wall once they're dry
  • The finish goes on in one pass, so no join is left in the middle of your wall
  • Knockdown gets its blade pass once the spray has set up enough to take it
  • The surface is left to dry through before anything is primed or painted

Why a wall repair still shows after it was painted

Usually it isn't the paint at all. A patch that was filled flat and rolled over sits there smooth while the wall around it holds its shadow. The first low sun that crosses the room shows you exactly where it is. The fix is to put the right finish back on and carry it far enough out that no edge is left.

Getting every wall in a house to match

Where a house has had work done a room at a time, it often ends up carrying two or three finishes. Nobody notices until one wall gets repaired and the mismatch is obvious. If that's where you are, it's easier to settle what the whole house is going to be before any more work happens.

Drywall Texture Questions We Get Asked in Boerne

Why are walls textured in Texas?

Because a sprayed wall is quicker to finish than a flat one and it hides a great deal more. A flat surface has to be skimmed and sanded end to end, where a finish sprayed in one pass gets you a wall you can paint in a fraction of the time. Houses here were built in volume, so that became what a Texas wall looks like.

What does orange peel or knockdown cost per square foot?

Across a whole surface, $0.90 to $1.60 per square foot. Skip trowel and hand-troweled finishes are $1.60 to $3 per square foot, because they go on by hand a section at a time. Both of those assume your surface is already prepared.

What does it cost to match the texture on a repair?

Texture matching adds $75 to $250 on top of the repair itself. That covers the test sprays, the match, and carrying the finish far enough past your patch that its edge disappears. On a sprayed wall it's the difference between a repair nobody can find and one you notice from the doorway.

What are the drywall finish levels?

They describe how much compound goes onto a wall before any texture does, and they run from taped joints only up to a full skim. The one worth knowing is level 5, that full skim, which is why a wall finished to it holds an even sheen from one corner to the other. It adds $1 to $1.75 per square foot, and you want it under a smooth wall or anywhere a long wall gets raking light.

Can you change the texture in one room without doing the whole house?

Yes, and it's common enough. A closed room reads as its own space, so a different finish in your bedroom isn't something anybody picks up from the hallway. It gets harder where a kitchen, dining and living room all run together, because two walls meeting at a corner have to carry the same finish.

Do you have to retexture a whole wall to hide a repair?

Usually not. The finish gets carried out from the repair until it's thin enough that nothing catches. On a long wall that might be a few feet on both sides rather than corner to corner. On a small wall, or where your repair sits in the middle of a clear surface, taking it wall to wall is safer.

Where People Go Next From Drywall Texture

Drywall Repair

Cracks, holes, dents and the old patch somebody filled flat and never finished back. Matching the wall is most of the work.

What a drywall crack means, and how we close it →

New Construction Drywall

Whole houses boarded, finished and sprayed while they're still empty, priced by the square foot off the plans.

Drywall on a house that is still being built →

Popcorn Ceiling Removal

Taking the old acoustic finish off a ceiling and skimming what's underneath flat, with a test first on an older ceiling.

What popcorn ceiling removal costs, start to finish →

Drywall Installation

New board in a house you already live in: a wall opened up, a ceiling taken down, a room going back together.

New drywall in a room you already live in →

Drywall Repair in Fair Oaks Ranch

Big lots under heavy live oak, with the houses set well back off the road.

Drywall repair in Fair Oaks Ranch →

Drywall Repair in Scenic Oaks

Wooded acre lots on the Bexar County side, some behind the gate and plenty that are not.

Drywall repair in Scenic Oaks →
Hand holding a small work lamp close against a textured interior wall so the light rakes along the surface, the finish standing out in relief and the rest of the room soft behind it

Get Your FREE Estimate

A photo taken with a lamp held off to one side tells us most of it. There's a form below, and there's 830-357-7353 if you'd rather talk.

The finish on your walls, matched so nothing shows where the work was.

Call Us Now! 830-357-7353