I got the painted striped wall design finished on the main walls of the bathroom, and I have to say, this is my absolute favorite wall design I’ve ever painted. Y’all! I can’t stop looking at these walls! Here’s how they turned out.
These walls exceeded my expectations. I knew that I would love them from the mockup that I did. Here’s a look at that for reference.
I loved that mockup, but when it came to painting the actual design on the walls, I decided to group like colors together rather than having them in a random order like they are in the mockup. I’m really glad I did that because I still have a whole lot of color (again, 35 colors!), but I think putting like colors together helped to calm the design down just a bit.
I am absolutely thrilled with this. I don’t think I could love it any more than I do. There are a couple of individual colors that I wasn’t so crazy about once I put them on the walls, and while the walls were still in process, I thought I might go back and swap those colors out for something else. But once the whole thing was done and all of the painters tape was removed, those couple of didn’t bother me at all. So in the end, I decided to keep them and move on.
So here’s a really quick review of the whole process from beginning to end. I had originally designed wallpaper for this room, but installing the wallpaper was a real disaster. You can read about that here. So I decided to paint a design on the walls using the 35 different colors in the wallpaper, which you can see on my worktable in the photo below. I decided to go with stripes instead of squares (obviously), so I then arranged the colors in the order that I wanted the strips to go.
Then I marked the vertical lines for the stripes on the walls using a pencil, and to make things as easy as possible, I just went with the width of my level for the width of the stripes. That way, there was no measuring and marking required for the stripe width.
Once the vertical lines were drawn, I divided the walls into thirds and marked two horizontal lines going all the way around the room. The lines are faint, but I think you can see them here.
With all of my lines drawn, I then numbered each stripe. I started on the top row, and numbered the stripes from 1 to 35 all the way around the room. On the second row, I started under stripe 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 taped off the stripes on the top and bottom rows and began painting.
Once the top and bottom rows were finished and all of the tape was removed, the walls looked like this.
Once I had all of the top and bottom row stripes painted, I came back and taped off the middle row and painted those stripes.
Obviously, I could only tape off and paint every other stripe at a time. Once those stripes were completely dry, I came back and taped off the rest and painted those. Here are the two very important tips I can pass along on a project like this:
- Only use painters tape for delicate surfaces. If you use regular painters tape on freshly painted stripes, it will peel the paint off.
- Before painting each stripe, use a wet rag to press the painters tape down really well on the wall and to also remove all of the pencil marks. Pencil marks will often bleed through paint, so don’t always count on the paint covering over pencil marks. But wiping the edges of painters tape with a wet rag right before painting also helps to get really crisp lines without the paint bleeding under the tape.
By using that process, I was actually very amazed at how few areas needed touchups after all of that painting and taping. The tape peeled off this tiny little spot under the window.
I also had a trouble spot here in the corner where I couldn’t get the tape lined up perfectly right in the corner, so I have this white sliver of wall showing. I’ll need to touch that up with a small artist brush.
I had this tiny area on the light pink stripe that peeled off.
And then I had the same problem in this corner where I had trouble getting the painters tape in exactly the right spot. So corners are a little challenging, but that touchup is easy enough.
But overall, these stripes are pretty darn perfect. Using that wet rag over the edges of the tape before painting was key, and I had virtually zero paint bleed under the tape. There are maybe two exceptions, but that was due to small uneven bumps in the surface of the wall (like something had gotten into the paint as I rolled it on) and not due to the failure of the tape. Other than a couple of areas where that happened, the lines are pretty perfect. I was astounded, to be quite honest.
And here’s the aftermath. This is a pretty tiny bathroom, and I still have one problem wall to deal with, so I’m not even completely finished yet. And I went through five rolls of painters tape. 😀
But it was totally worth it! I’d do it all over again if I had to because, like I said, this is hands down my favorite wall design I’ve ever done.
I can’t wait to get this bathroom finished and get the whole area cleaned up so that I can give you a view of these walls and this bathroom from the studio. When I sit at my desk and get the whole view of the back entry with the floral curtains, the bathroom walls, and the cabinets with all of the paint samples painted on them, it’s absolutely a feast for the eyes (if you love color as much as I do). And they all go together so perfectly. But I’ll have to share that a bit later. For now, the whole area looks like a tornado went through. 😀
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Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.
