Five Lime Finishes Worth Learning Together

Novacolor's lime plaster line runs far deeper than any single workshop could cover, so for Modern Minerals: Top-Selling Lime Plaster Techniques, I chose the five finishes seeing the most demand from clients and designers right now. One reads like polished stone. One is soft enough to compare to suede. One catches gold and bronze light. One is built to withstand weather on the outside of a building. They all start from lime, and from there, each takes its own direction.

Five finishes, five different jobs

Archi+ Tadelakt has that smooth, sinuous, marble-like surface people associate with Moroccan riads, the kind of wall that begs to be touched. VP Suede goes the other way, a soft, napped texture that behaves more like fabric than stone. Marmorino KS sits in between, a silky satin-to-matte surface that reads as soft stone and shifts depending on how it's troweled. Teodorico is where things get interesting, a lime plaster carrying real gold, silver, or bronze shimmer, workable into a travertine or stone effect with that earthy, matte depth underneath the metal. Concrete by Novacolor closes it out with the architectural weight of true concrete, built to hold up outdoors.

Five distinct looks, from the silky smooth character of Tadelakt to the earthy matte depth of Teodorico to the architectural weight of a concrete finish. None of them behaves like the others once they're on a wall.

Why I teach them together

I don't teach these one at a time. When they're taught together, students see how the materials relate to each other and where each one earns its place on a project, instead of learning five finishes in isolation and guessing at which one fits where.

Each material gets real product, real substrate, and real application technique. Nobody's watching a demo from across the room. By the end, you leave with a working understanding of how to specify, apply, and sell each finish, plus samples ready to bring straight into a client presentation.

Catch me live this October

I'm teaching it as a two-day, hands-on workshop at the Fine Finish Expo in Minneapolis.

Modern Minerals: Top-Selling Lime Plaster Techniques: October 7 & 8 | 1 to 5pm daily Fine Finish Expo, Minneapolis. $350.

Registration is through the Fine Finish Expo page at idal.org/workshops.

If liquid metal is more your speed, I'm also teaching a Metallo Fuso Workshop that same week.

Miss this one? Reach out anytime and we can talk about custom training, for you or your whole team.