Who doesn’t love a good accent wall? Our master bedroom is quite small, so I wanted to create an accent wall that would make a big impact without closing the space in. It took a few sketches before I settled on a design. The ceiling line is a little tricky so I had to stray from anything completely symmetrical.
The first thing I did was give the whole room a fresh coat of white paint. I used Sherwin Williams ‘Alabaster White’. Alabaster is a great soft white, that has a nice greige undertone to it that pairs well with everything. Painting first prepped my wall to start laying out the design.
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Once you have a design mapped out for your wall here are the tools you’ll need:
Tools Needed:
- 1×2’s Select Pine Wood (you could use MDF or wood of your choice)
- Nail Gun
- Nails
- Sliding Bevel Gauge or Angle Finder Ruler
- Painters Tape
- Level
- Miter Saw
- Wood filler
- Putty knife
- Sand paper
- Paint
- Paintbrush + Roller
- Paint Roller
- Caulk (Paintable Silicone Caulk)
- Caulk Gun
Step 1:
Pick your starting point. For my design, I started with the one vertical piece of wood and used that as my guide to create the angles off of. Don’t forget to check and make sure it’s level before you nail it in! Once my vertical piece was in place I used painters tape to map out my first angle.
Once I was happy with the position of the tape, I marked it with a pencil on both ends, took it off the wall and laid it directly on my piece of wood, making sure to pull it tight and straight (it helps if you have two people) and then made my cuts using the miter saw.
Now you can get really technical and do all the math and figure out the angles (my husband and I started to do this at first, and it is very time consuming and we were more precise with the tape method). Never rely on the ceiling or the edge of a wall for measurements, they are seldom perfectly straight.
Step 2:
Once we had the first angled wood piece in place, we used our angle finder ruler to match the angle of all our other similar pieces so it was properly aligned.
Next, we had to decide how far we wanted our wood angled pieces spaced apart. Then we marked the measurement, checked the angle and attached the next few pieces until the left side of the vertical wood piece was complete.
Step 3:
Once we had the left side complete, the process started going faster since we were mirroring the angle from the left side to the right.
After all your pieces are in place apply wood filler to cover the nail holes and seams using a putty knife. I like to use a little extra to make sure the hole is filled in well. Then let the wood filler fully dry and sand until smooth.
Step 4:
After everything was sanded and cleaned up we were ready to paint! I used a paint brush to get all the edges and then used a roller to go over the whole wall one more time for a nice even coat.
Step 5:
Caulk! Once the paint dried it was easier to see any gaps that were left to fill. Caulk around any edges and smooth it out with your finger. If there is a significant gap between the wood and the wall, you can use a little caulking trick I learned…take some toilet paper in small amounts and stuff it in to fill the gap making sure its nice and tight and then you can caulk over it and you’ll never know!
Step 6:
Once I finished caulking, I touched up the few areas with paint to make sure everything blended nicely. The more complicated the design the longer it will take, but the impact it makes on the space is worth it! Our bedroom now feels so welcoming and cozy.
If you decide to try your own feature wall tag me on instagram [@bridgette.alexandra] , I would love to see what you come up with!
