It's easy to personalize your home with paint. Decorative painting techniques offer myriad possibilities for customizing the look you want to convey.

Experiment first. If you're not ready to tackle a whole room, see what a difference you can make by embellishing a small table, dresser or rocking chair.

From direct color choices on walls to faux finishes -- faux is French for fake -- you can give the look of wood grain, stone or marble to walls and other surfaces. The beauty of paint, of course, is simple -- if you don't like it after you've finished a technique, paint over it with a base coat and begin again.

While decorative painting has enjoyed a revival in recent years, it has a rich history, going back to Greek and Roman temples and European decorative painting schools. Homeowners today have helpful brushes, rollers, kits, paints and varnishes to make the task easier.

Feeling unsure about using color? Gain confidence by finding out which colors you favor. Clip photos of rooms you like. Select paint chips to keep on file. Look at paintings in museums, galleries or shops and notice the color in the ones you prefer. Walk through furniture showrooms and look at draperies, upholstery and carpets to see what you like. What colors in nature do you prefer? What colors do you wear most often? Over time, you'll see your preferences emerge.

Tips on using color:

Pick a key color and use it in some way in each room, as a dominant, secondary or accent color.

Use variety. A room of all pale tints will look dull, and one entirely in dark shades will seem gloomy.

Light colors are airy and expansive. Dark colors are sophisticated and warm and make a large room appear more intimate.

Offset bright and bold colors in a room by painting the ceiling and woodwork white This offers visual relief.

When using different hues or paint techniques in several rooms, consider painting spaces between the rooms, such as hallways, with neutral colors to avoid clashes.

Many decorative painting techniques help hide flaws in a room.

Make a long, narrow room seem wider by painting the short walls a darker color than the long ones.

Until you get familiar with a particular technique, remember that it might take extra steps to achieve the look you're after. Many decorative finishes like ragging, stippling, combing and marbling call for several applications after the base coat is applied.

There's a whole gallery of effects to come by with paint -- glazing and color washing, combing, antiquing, crackling, distressing, dragging, flogging, gold-leafing, wood-graining, granite, ragging, marbling, spattering, sponging, stenciling, stippling, striping, along with weathered-metals looks.

Ortho's All About Decorative Painting, (Meredith Books, $11.95 trade paper)