My. Childhood friends mom and Dad redid their garage to be a play room for thier kids and I was there the day the Dad was applying this shit to the walls. I asked him why was he doing it? He said to make the wall look nice. I said but it is ugly. It was the point bumpy kind he was adding. He said yeah but the wife said to do it so I am. I said but why she make you do it? He looked me dead in the eyes and said she says it needs to match so I am making it match. The rest their house walls had the same stuff on them. I just walked off and said well its ugly and he just said I KNOW! lol
Honestly ever house I ever lived in had ATLEAST 1 room with this stuff on it.
The most common one was the bottom right.
Old houses used plaster for walls. Plaster has its pros and cons but is overall a good material. The primary issue is that plaster requires special skills and experience to work well, quality backing, and it cracks as holes flex and bow- these cracks are also labor intensive to repair. Dry wall is cheap, easily worked without special tools or skills- a monkey can hang drywall. Drywall is covered in “mud” a putty that dries to the wall surface you see- mud is cheap and can be shot out of a spray gun quickly, easily, and again- without almost any skill. It’s easy to work with and repair as well, and a home being built or renovated with drywall and mud can be competed with far fewer labor hours than plaster. Repairs usually can be done easily with small patches or tape and a quick spot application and drywall and mud don’t tend to crack like plaster. All in all- it’s cheaper and easier to do.
So the texture you see is partially because the mud is- well- it’s a putty like a toothpaste kind of. It’s sticky. It takes some level of work to get it flat- naturally it doesn’t sit flat but is blobby. Because it is sticky, when you try to smooth it that tends to leave marks from where you used the tool and from lifting it. See- even many “smooth” walls with mud- if you look closely have a sort of “orange peel” look. You can lay down mud in coats and then sand it after to achieve a truly smooth wall- but this is again- much more labor intensive and requires patience and skill.
Much like many associate white walls with a rental property- a wall sprayed with mud and then maybe sanded or left as the mud laid when sprayed may seem “cheap” or plain to many. So various “knock down” techniques sprung up. You basically apply the mud via spray or trowel, then go over it in whatever pattern or form suits you to just get rid of the major peaks and valleys of the surface. If you ever see walls where the surface has rounded blobs with low spots, they basically threw mud on it and then just squished down with a trowel. Probably the simplest and easiest technique and very common on cheap commercial or mass build residential properties because this doesn’t really require any skill, little time, and little labor.
The little “points” that look like thousands of spikes or tiny mountain ranges is a little more involved but not much, and other patterns like swirls are just variations people cake up with the make their wall texture not the default norm- like painting a room gray instead of white so that it isn’t an exact cookie cutter of what one expects in mass production low grade cheap construction.
The patterns can also help with sound in a room- reducing things like echos and helping to lower the perceived volume of sound as well as how far sound carries. Which again- would be popular in mass unit housing like apartments, condos, and high density housing developments.
High traffic areas and holes expected to see abuse like rental properties are built with not only cost of construction but on going maintenance in mind. White paint for example tends to be cheap, easy to match, hard to see when it doesn’t exactly match, it actually hides surface imperfections and blemishes well despite what one might think contrary on instinct, and if you reaping the fact it’s easy to match helps make repairs cost loss and work better. Likewise- it’s often hard to get an exact match on texture for a wall- but most people won’t notice a small area where the texture doesn’t match- the texture does a good job hiding damage or repairs from a distance. It’s also much easier to repair than flat walls which would require a large area be redone and repainted to ensure the section was level to those around it and flat and seamless- and that whole section would then need painted.
Tl:dr- in simple terms wall texture is a byproduct of cheap modern construction. If you want flat walls you can expect to pay someone a lot of money to do it, or you’ll be putting in a lot of work depending on your skill level. It’s cheaper and easier to build and repair textured walls in general, and different versions of texture are just peoples attempts to be artistic and “make the best” with something that is a practical effect of cheap wall construction. It does have some other practical effects like acoustics- and some people do like texture simply because like white walls- they don’t like how “plain” things look when they are just flat.
*personal note- I like flat walls. I really dislike knock down construction. The last walls I did I did in plaster and make them smooth as a babies bottom. I moved from that house when I changed jobs. I liked that house. Someone got nice walls. I have shit walls in my condo now and debate daily if I should bother to redo them when I know I’ll be moving at least one more time once we decide on a house and a location we want to live and are out of the condo- and do I really want to give someone else who probably won’t appreciate them nice walls? We shall see.
In context to the length of the post- 100 odd words seems short in relativity. But I didn’t say I was going to use executive bullet point or do an elevator pitch- just pare it down a bit if anyone didn’t want to read the whole thing but still wanted a relatively comprehensive overview.
Just as a fun fact- yes and no. Asbestos was used in a sprayable mix to apply popcorn ceilings into the 1980’s in the US because even after they were banned, special permission allowed makers to sell of whatever they had stocked up. If you’re dealing with a home that was made before the 1990’s there is a high risk the popcorn ceiling is asbestos of no previous owner removed it. Even touching it can expose you to hazardous dust- that’s how sensitive it is to disturbance.
You can get it tested by a professional if you aren’t sure. Sealing the ceiling is your cheapest option for mitigation. Installing a “false ceiling” below the real one is likely next cheapest and slightly more effective- best choice is professional removal, but that tends to be quite costly. In most countries if you are aware you have asbestos and don’t disclose to a buyer you can be legally liable for removal.
But if you have popcorn ceilings don’t freak out! They may not be asbestos. That look was only very popular between a certain time period that overlaps the use of asbestos- but occasionally popcorn ceilings are used after the asbestos ones more or less went away. Not all ceilings in that time period used asbestos either- conversely, where old stock exists it is doubtful but possible a ceiling done much later COULD contain asbestos. All in all if you aren’t sure it’s best to treat your popcorn ceilings as though they are asbestos and not disturb them or put tall furniture/bunk beds in the same room.
Honestly ever house I ever lived in had ATLEAST 1 room with this stuff on it.
The most common one was the bottom right.