Accent Walls: How to paint a Chevron Wall Tutorial

I don’t know about you, but I love a good accent wall in a room. I feel it just adds to the decor and gives the room a focus. I don’t like boring rooms, our living room at one point had a red accent wall and I loved it! When we were painting one of the rooms at our first house, I decided I wanted to do something different as an accent wall.  I didn’t want it to just be one solid color so I decided to try my hand at doing a chevron wall as the accent. The before of all the walls in this room were a fading white where they were painted so long ago that the white is now yellowing. My personal opinion I don’t think they had been repainted since the house was built in the 50’s. It  was definitely time to give it a modern update.

I love decorating with accent walls because it can add a lot to the room for a small cost. The only supplies you need for this project are your two paint colors ( I used white over the color I choose for the whole room. You can use any two colors you want), a step stool or ladder, paint rollers and brush, lots of painter’s tape, and a way to make sure your lines are straight, I used a laser level. That’s it

We started by painting the entire room gray, I picked two choices from Home Depot and after painting them both on the wall decided to go with the lighter one. The chosen color color was from Behr at Home Depot and it’s called Sparrow. Once the room was freshly painted and dried it was ready to start prepping the accent wall. The first step is to decide how big you wide you want your lines to be. I measured the length of the wall (12 ft) and then spent some time decided how many bends in my chevron I wanted and what would make even lines all the way across. I divided by 1.5 ft. Once you have your measurements decided mark them off along the bottom of the wall. The next step is much easier if you have a laser lever to help. You’ll want to put a straight line of painter’s tape from the top of the wall to the bottom at each of those marks.

You’re next step is to decide how many lines you want going down your wall. I didn’t want to make them too small because I didn’t want it to make me dizzy to look at it when I entered the room. I choose 15 inches because it divided evenly into my 7.5 ft (90 in) wall. The interval you choose is entirely up to you, just remember the smaller the interval the more lines you will have on the wall. After you decide on you intervals it’s time to mark each of the vertical stripes you already placed  on the wall. If you have a laser lever it can help with this step, because you won’t have to individually measure each line.

Once you have marked off all your measurement you will play a little connect the dots with those marks. You will take pieces of tape and connect the alternating does on each line with each other. This step is what creates the chevron pattern.

This next step is entirely up to you if you want your lines to be solid or if you want to have the division of the lines. I’ve seen walls done both ways, but I wanted my lines to be solid, so I went back and cut out the lines dividing the sections on all the rows I would be painting white. I placed all of those excess pieces randomly into the other rows just to help me make sure I didn’t accidentally paint the wrong row in the next step. This is the last “prep” step before you’re ready to paint.

You’re now ready to paint your white accent lines. I’ve read that you can paint the edges with the base color first to avoid you’re accent color from bleeding under the tape. I did this and it’s didn’t help so that’s totally up to you if you want to do that extra step first. Be careful not to paint too far across the tape and accidentally paint into the next section.

Most of you probably won’t run into the dilemma I ran into with having a door on the wall you choose for your accent wall. This particular room was full of wall openings, doors and windows and this wall was the best option I had. I originally was going to leave the door alone but I didn’t like the way it stood out so I first decided to just paint it gray, and eventually taped it off and added the chevron as well and I’m so glad I did, it blends in and you barely notice it . It’s an unnecessary pocket door that we never use as it’s not the main entrance to this room. I wish It was easier to get rid of it all together but that’s a project for another day.

After I finished my third coat of paint it was time to carefully peel off all the tape. You want to peel it off before it dries so it doesn’t peel the paint off the wall with it. Just don’t go crazy and just rip it off because it is still wet and you don’t want it to get white paint in your gray sections. That’s a mess you don’t want to get stuck cleaning up. You’ll end up with a pile of painter’s tape, I think it’s the most used item in this project.

Once I removed the tape and left the paint dry there were a lot of sections where I had to go back and touch up the gray. Remember when I said it was suggested to paint the gray along the edge to prevent bleeding. It didn’t work so I would have rather just skipped that step since I had to do touch up anyway. (totally up to you if you, it might work great for you). Once I finished touching up all the edges I was so happy with the final outcome. I love it it just adds a nice contrast to the room.

I love the contrast with the wood floors, and on a sunny day with the windows open and the sunlight streaming in it just makes me so happy! I’ll leave you with this before and after photo of our accent wall after putting our furniture in the room.

Have you done any cool accent walls in your house? I’d love to check them out if you leave them in the comments below! As always if you enjoyed this post be sure to join our email list so you don’t miss any of our upcoming posts! I’d also love it if you’d share us with your friends on Facebook and give our page a like. You can find us here.