I had the striped wall design completed on the main bathroom walls and I have to say this is my absolute favorite wall design I have ever painted. All of you! I can’t stop looking at these walls! This is how they turned out.
These walls exceeded my expectations. I knew from the model I made that I would love her. Here’s a look at it for reference.
I loved this mockup, but when it came to painting the actual design on the walls, I decided to group similar colors together instead of arranging them in a random order like in the mockup. I’m really glad I did this because I still have a ton of color (35 colors again!) but I think combining similar colors helped calm the design down a bit.
I am absolutely thrilled with it. I don’t think I could love it more than I do. There are a few individual colors that I wasn’t too thrilled with after I put them on the walls, and while the walls were still a work in progress, I thought I might go back and swap out those colors for something else. But once the whole thing was finished and all the painter’s tape was removed, those few things didn’t bother me at all. In the end I decided to keep them and move on.
So here’s a really quick overview of the entire process from start to finish. I originally designed wallpaper for this room, but installing the wallpaper was a real disaster. You can read that here. That’s why I decided to paint a design on the walls using the 35 different colors of wallpaper that you can see on my work table in the photo below. I chose stripes instead of squares (of course) and then arranged the colors in the order I wanted the stripes.
I then used a pencil to mark the vertical lines for the stripes on the walls and to make it as easy as possible I simply chose the width of the stripes based on the width of my spirit level. This meant that measuring and marking the strip width was not necessary.
After the vertical lines were drawn, I divided the walls into thirds and marked two horizontal lines that ran across the entire room. The lines are faint, but I think you can see them here.
After drawing all of my lines, I then numbered each strip. I started on the top row and numbered the stripes throughout the room from 1 to 35. On the second row, I started at strip number 13 on the top row and began numbering the second row from 1 to 35 all the way around. And then I repeated that on the bottom row. And then I masked off the strips on the top and bottom rows and started painting.
After the top and bottom rows were completed and all the tape was removed, this is what the walls looked like.
After painting all the top and bottom row stripes, I came back, taped off the middle row and painted those stripes.
Apparently I could only tape and paint every other strip at a time. Once these strips were completely dry, I came back, taped off the rest, and painted them. Here are the two very important tips that I can pass on to a project like this:
- Use painter’s tape only on delicate surfaces. If you use regular painter’s tape on freshly painted stripes, the paint will peel off.
- Before painting each stripe, press the painter’s tape well against the wall with a damp rag and also remove any pencil marks. Pencil marks often go through the paint, so don’t always expect the paint to cover the pencil marks. But wiping the edges of the painter’s tape with a damp rag immediately before painting also helps to get really clean lines without the paint bleeding under the tape.
By using this process, I was actually very amazed at how few areas needed touching up after all that painting and gluing. The tape came off in that tiny spot under the window.
Also, I had a problematic spot here in the corner where I couldn’t get the tape right in the corner, so you can see this white stripe of a wall here. I need to touch this up with a small artist’s brush.
I had this tiny area on the light pink stripe that was peeling off.
And then I had the same problem in this corner where I had trouble getting the painter’s tape in exactly the right place. So curves are a bit of a challenge, but mending them is easy enough.
But overall these flicks are pretty darn perfect. It was important to run the damp rag over the edges of the tape before painting, and I had virtually no paint seepage under the tape. There are perhaps two exceptions, but that was due to small uneven bumps in the wall surface (like something got into the paint when I rolled it up) and not due to failure of the tape. Other than a few places where that happened, the lines are pretty perfect. To be honest, I was amazed.
And here are the consequences. This is a pretty small bathroom and I still have a problem with the wall so I’m not even quite finished yet. And I used five rolls of painter’s tape.
But it was absolutely worth it! If I had to, I would do it again because like I said, this is hands down my favorite wall design I’ve ever done.
I can’t wait to finish this bathroom and clean up the entire area so I can give you a view of these walls and bathroom from the studio. When I sit at my desk and take in the entire view of the back entrance with the floral curtains, the bathroom walls, and the cabinets with all the color swatches painted on them, it’s an absolute feast for the eyes (if you love colors as much as I do). And they all fit together so perfectly. But I have to share that a little later. At the moment the whole area looks like a tornado.
