Camouflage Outlet Covers & Switch Plates

by Mariel May 9, 2016

If the devil’s in the detail, then no detail is more devilish – or more often overlooked – than switch plates and outlet covers. When you’re dressing walls in a beautiful wallpaper, the eye is immediately drawn to stark white squares, so most skilled paperers will also swath switch plates so they blend in seamlessly. Same for boldly painted and lacquered walls.

Tile can be a bit trickier though – unless of course you’re cladding a backsplash in white subways. In my own home, I went with a beautiful blue-grey mosaic tile for the kitchen – it’s actually what informed the look of the whole room since I fell head over heels for it while browsing Walker Zanger’s Westchester showroom. It’s a total showstopper, in my humble opinion.

After our tiler carefully laid the last piece I was delighted…until that is, I realized my bright white outlet covers were stealing the show. I was hesitant to hide them behind decorative accessories since I didn’t want to conceal the tile I loved so much. So what to do…

As luck would have it, I came in contact with Lauren DiFerdinando, an incredibly talented decorative painter and artist who’s opening a gallery in Cape Cod. We had been in touch to address my living room mantle – I needed a faux bois finish since it couldn’t be re-stained to its original rich, dark wood tone – and she showed me her jaw-dropping portfolio of faux finishes.

In fact, her talent for tricking the eye is so extraordinary, she was enlisted to spend an entire week on a remote island in Canada hand-painting a metal railing on a boat dock so that it resembled driftwood. That’s right, the above shot is of a metal railing…bananas.

Anyway, after mentioning my tile dilemma, she said it wouldn’t be a problem to reiterate the mosaic pattern on the five outlet covers spanning our backsplash. Once again, I was floored by the results. Can you find all five switchplates?