How do I texture my TARDIS?

[Dematerialiser]

The texture on various Tardis props varied depending on the age (and therefore the layers of paint and amount of flaking) as well as the actual material each prop was made of.

With the fibreglass props a subtle concrete/pebble-dash texture was built into the fibreglass itself.  Add plenty of over-painting, weathering, damage and studio lighting and it can, in some episodes, appear quite pronounced; in others the opposite seems to be true.

One big question to ask yourself as a Tardis builder is: where will the box live when it's finished? If it's outdoors and exposed to the elements you might want to think twice about heavy texturing - since whatever you apply to the wood (assuming you don't build a fibreglass one) will probably not expand and contract at the same rate as the wood itself. The result, most likely, will be that the texturing falls off or cracks very badly. Another method would be to apply a weatherproof paint using a textured roller or coarse stippling, but this is a lot of effort to produce an effect which, in many cases, doesn't really make a lot of difference once the whole thing is painted blue. Weathering with a cloth and some dark paint can achieve a lot, with or without texturing.

PurpleBlancmange has plenty of experience of these and other texturing issues, so I'm sure he can add much more to this thread.