Dreaming about
painting

Paint does two opposite jobs. It can make something new, a blank canvas turned into a picture, or it can hide something old, a stain or a crack under a fresh coat. Dreaming about painting usually means you want to change something, and the dream asks which of those two you're doing. It can also be about expression, a feeling that wants out in color because you haven't found the words for it.

What you were painting and how it went decide most of the reading. Painting a bedroom wall and painting a portrait are very different dreams, and so are paint that goes on smoothly and paint that drips, spills or won't cover what's underneath. The color you chose, and why, is often the clue people forget to look at.

What dreaming about painting means

Paint is slow to dry, messy to work with and very visible once it's on the wall, and anyone who has repainted a room knows how much it changes the feel of a place.

A fresh start

A new coat of paint is how people mark a new beginning, moving into a place, after a breakup or when a baby is on the way. Painting dreams often come at those moments. If the room looked better when you'd finished, the dream may be about a change you're making in your life and feel good about.

Covering something up

English has "papering over the cracks" and "painting over the problem" for the quick fix that hides what's wrong. If the old color kept bleeding through, or you were painting fast before someone arrived, the dream may be about a situation where you're making things look fine without fixing them. What were you trying to hide, and from whom?

Saying it in color

Painting a picture is about self-expression. A dream where you paint freely, mixing colors without a plan, often comes when you have feelings that haven't found an outlet. If you used to paint and stopped, it may also be a wish to go back to it, and dreams have given plenty of painters their images.

Dreaming about painting walls

Walls are the version people search for most, and they're about your space and your boundaries. Painting the walls of your home often points to changes in home or family life, or in how you present yourself. White is the color of starting over, and dark colors can mean you want more privacy or comfort. If you were painting yourself into a corner (literally, with no way out across wet paint), the dream may be about a decision that has left you stuck.

Dreaming about painting a picture

Standing at an easel or in front of a canvas is about creativity and how you see things. What you painted is usually what's on your mind, a person, a place or a scene you can't shake. If the picture turned out better than you could ever paint awake, the dream may be showing you an ability you've been underrating, which isn't the same as drawing, where the plan matters more than the color.

Dreaming about spilling paint

Spilled paint is the mess that comes with any change. A can knocked over across a new floor often points to worry that a fresh start will go wrong, or that something you said or did will leave a mark you can't clean up. The color matters, since red can be about anger or a confrontation and black about something darker spreading into a part of life that was clean.

Dreaming about a painting coming to life

When a portrait moves its eyes or you step into a landscape on a gallery wall, the dream is about a memory, an image or an idea becoming more real than you expected. It can be wonderful or uncanny. If it was a painting from your own home, look at what it means to your family. If it was in a museum, it may be about something from the past that feels alive again.

Famous paintings about dreams

Painters have been painting dreams for centuries. Henry Fuseli's The Nightmare (1781) shows a demon squatting on a sleeping woman's chest, close to how people describe sleep paralysis. Henri Rousseau's The Dream (1910) puts a woman on a sofa in the middle of a jungle, and Salvador Dalí's melting clocks in The Persistence of Memory (1931) are probably the best-known dream picture there is.

Dreaming about painting according to Jung and Freud

Neither man wrote about painting a room, but the idea each is best known for suits one.

Jung on a coat of paint

Jung's persona is the surface you present, a mask worn over the rest.^[1] A fresh coat of paint over a stained wall is that surface, and the old color bleeding through is what the mask was covering, which he would have called the shadow, the part of you kept out of sight.^[1] If you were painting before someone arrived, ask who the new face was for.

Freud on the weekend with a roller

A painting dream is the most literal case of Freud's day residue,^[2] since a weekend with a roller in your hand sends the hallway straight into the night. If you hadn't touched a brush lately, his next step was your own associations, and after that the wish, which here is usually to look different without having to change what's underneath.

The spiritual meaning of painting in dreams

Two old texts reach for painting, one as a picture of how the mind works and one in a story about a dream that was drawn.

Paintings in the Mandukya Upanishad

The Mandukya Upanishad is a twelve-verse text on the states of waking, dreaming and deep sleep. In the commentary that goes with it, the philosopher Shankara says the dreaming mind replays the impressions waking life has left, "like a piece of canvas with the pictures painted on it."^[3]

A dream portrait in the Book of Documents

The Book of Documents (Shujing), the classic of early royal speeches and records, has King Wu Ding say that he dreamed God gave him a good assistant. He had a portrait drawn and found Yue, a builder, whom he made his chief minister.^[4]

Questions to ask about your painting dream

Most of the meaning sits in the color and the surface you painted.

• What were you painting, and was it yours?
• What color did you choose, and why?
• Did the paint cover well, or did the old surface show through?
• Was anyone watching or waiting?
• What in your life are you trying to change, or cover up?

Oniri asks about the surface and the color before reading a painting dream, since a fresh start and a cover-up can look the same at first.