In article ,
David Nebenzahl wrote:

I've been running into a fair number of drywall patching jobs lately
that involve small patches to existing walls. While I'm actually very
good at creating good, smooth, even seamless patches, one thing I don't
know how to do is to match wall textures.

Now, I'm not a professional drwyall hanger, never have been, and don't
want to be. I'm not about to invest in a lot of equipment. But I would
like to have a few common textures in my bag of tricks, so that I could
at least come close to matching the existing texture after completing a
patch.

The textures I see vary from the canonical "skip-troweled" texture to a
sort of blobby flattened oatmeal to a kind of rough old-fashioned
plaster look (on wallboard, not lath and plaster).

Any help here would be much appreciated, preferably using standard tools
and joint compound.

I'm not a drywall guy but it seems to me that most texture guys these
days are using either hand trowelling or spraying. Back in the day,
rolling with a nappy paint roller was also common, as was adding sand
for texture.

The blobby flattened oatmeal might be rolled on, and the rough old
fashioned plaster look might have sand in there, but those are just
guesses from my personal interpretation of your descriptions.

The only technique I know of that requires any real equipment is
spraying. Spray-on mud leaves a sort of uniform "splattered-paint"
texture.