First, have you looked in our Bathrooms thread in the Gallery? How about the Show Me Your Cottage Decor thread? Those threads are chockablock full of photos of gorgeous rooms. You are bound to find some inspiration there. You might also want to look at my Ceilings thread. Close this thread, and at the bottom of the page click on the Gallery link. Once there, go to the bottom of the page and enter those titles in the search engine. I'm pretty sure I have some mural pictures in the bathrooms thread. You can also google "murals" and find all sorts of wonderful sites.

I don't know if you can fill/sand your walls smooth, but one solution would be to do that and then do a wainscoating wallpaper on the lower part of the wall. Or, do real wainscoating. It's not very expensive, and it is more durable.

I honestly think you're going to want your walls pretty smooth if you want to paint a mural on anyway -- or pretty much no matter what you want to do. All you need is a bucket of wall mud, a trowel, a good dust mask, some goggles or glasses, and a sander. It's VERY dusty work.

Another possibility would be to do an imprinted paper, such as this:

The technique used there is the paper was painted metallic gold, then the brown was applied, then the brown was rubbed off while still wet, and left to settle in the deeper areas.

Here it is with a burgundy and silver:

The papers pictured here are lincrusta, and they're VERY expensive, but I don't see why you couldn't get something very pretty using the same technique on a much less expensive "paintable wallpaper." To buy it, that's the words you google.

Okay, here are some inspiration photos of murals I have collected.

You can do a tile effect:

Another thing that can look good is faux ragging technique on the walls PLUS stencils. Google Royal stencils to see more of that.

They also have all-over wall stencils, like damask and such.

One more thing, they have murals you can buy and put up like wallpaper. You can find them on the web.

Does this help?

In my experience as an artist, there is a lot of ho hum decor out there. Then there is breathtaking genius, and there is often a very fine line between that and tacky-tacky-tacky. When doing a mural it's easy enough to cross that line, so we need to be careful. There are some breathtaking murals out there, and some really awful ones. If I do something in decor and it doesn't get oooos and ahhhhs, it generally gets redone. I tried to just put pretty good ones here, but everyone has different taste, so I covered a wide range in what I posted. I hope you get some ideas you like from these posts.

Damask wall done with stencils...

Stenciled...

Faux with stencils...

Metallic panel over sponged bronze metallic...

Metallic scroll allover stencil...

I dunno... stencil, decoupage, you decide... you can decoupage on walls. It can be gorgeous. I've seen it done with wallpaper where a design was cut out.

Drop shadow stencils on stripes...

Raised plaster stencil (they have those at Royal too)...

Faux wainscoting, with simple white stenciling on wall and ceiling (I love this one!)...

Murals...

You can also glue fabric on the wall with wallpaper paste. Watch and plan for a little shrinkage as it dries.

Craigslist is full of surprises, such as wallpaper and tiles, for very cheap.

The Rasterbator creates huge graphic images you print off your computer...

You can also paint a paintable wallpaper just one solid color...

Did you see anything you like?

Anyone want to discuss how to do any of these treatments?

Holy moly, oceanna.
Can you tell me more about the photo of the faux wainscoting, with white stenciling on wall and ceiling. What's real and what's not?

When I was a kid,my parents purchased a paint by number wall mural. You hang up the paper, trace it onto the wall, the back of the paper is carbon paper, then fill it in with the paint by number paints.

Here is a link that might be useful: Paint by number kits

I'm an artist so painting a mural won't be a problem. Just trying to find pictures to put it all together.

Oceanna: Thank you for all the pictures ... WOW ! Great ideas. I'm not wanting to faux paint or stencil. I really love the 7th picture from the bottom and the 7th picture from the top.

I was thinking something along the lines of a Toulouse-Lautrec style. Or a brick will with yellow stucco and pots with flowers. Maybe paint a window with a scene and paint the door like it's two halves with a window.

I did a search before asking a silly question but nothing came up.

Thanks again for all the great pictures and ideas. I will post a picture when I'm done.