Hoo boy, today’s post has all the good stuff: murder, mystery, INTRIGUE! Just kidding it actually has none of that. But it does have a riveting step-by-step tutorial that involves ten test pots of paint and a whole lot of lattice. So let’s get right into how we created this colorful wood wall treatment in our son’s room.
easy upholstered headboard and built-in bookshelf. It made his room so much more functional (and extra cozy), but we mentioned that we were all looking forward to adding some more color & personality in there for him over time – especially on that wall at the foot of his bed which, because we vaulted the ceilings in here, is over 9 feet tall.
this large colorful wall mural to our daughter’s tallest wall, our son became even more eager to have something bold and fun in his room too. And we all had such a good time with that project that we were excited by another chance to do something cheerful and interesting in here. But before I tell you how we made the colorful wall treatment that you see below (it’s not just paint – we actually applied wood strips so it has an awesome subtle texture in person!) let me tell you how we got here.
the duplex as a backsplash & it’s essentially what’s going on in the ceiling of our son’s room and our daughter’s room, seen below):
Choosing The Colors
We thought it could be cool to vaguely allude to the colors of a beach sunset, just because our son loves spending time at the beach and also gravitates towards blue, green, yellow, and orange more than the other colors in the paint deck (and those four colors tend to be present in a beach sunset).
After playing with a few paint decks with our son, he had some pretty great arguments for why we should choose certain ones (like voting for Jersey Cream since Mom is from New Jersey, and Sweet Orange and Sumptuous Peach because he likes those fruits). When we had ten colors that we thought would look good selected from the paint deck, we turned to Photoshop to try to picture how things might look on the wall if we did some randomized stripes of each color in sort of an imperfect gradient pattern down the wall. And that’s how we landed on this arrangement:
It gave us sort of an “ocean-at-dusk meets modern-rainbow-gradient” result, and it involved the following 10 colors (all by Sherwin-Williams):
- Sumptuous Peach (SW-6345)
- Sweet Orange (SW-6351)
- Jersey Cream (SW-6379) 熟妇的荡欲欧美在线观看
- Rice Paddy (SW-6414)
- Celery (SW-6421)
- Liveable Green (SW-6176)
- Waterscape (SW-6470)
- Comfort Gray (SW-6205)
- Vintage Vessel (SW-9050)
- Raindrop (SW-6495)
Now, if all of this digital planning seems overwrought to you (like it did to my wife, AHEM!), I’ll just say this: I was aiming to minimize wasted time and wasted materials by being as precise as we could with how much wood we needed to buy, as well as how many cuts of each size and color we’d need. I felt a little Type A doing it, but in the end, it made the execution of the idea go extremely smoothly. So… sorrynotsorry.
Painting & Prep
The material we’d be using for our strips was primed lattice molding, which we like because it’s thin (only 1/4″ thick) and still has some visible wood texture to it, even when it’s painted. Using precut strips that are only 1.5″ wide would allow us to incorporate a lot of strips into our design (60 in fact!) which we knew would make our gradient more subtle than if we’d used fewer wider boards (which again, were present on the ceiling, and we didn’t want to compete with that same scale).
Our first step was cutting our lattice roughly to size. Since we were installing it around a built-in bookcase and a closet door, we had three different lengths we were cutting. It’s also a good idea to leave them a little bit long at this point to account for walls that aren’t perfectly square. You can always trim them more precisely as you install them.
Installing The Painted Wood Strips
Before nailing anything to the wall, we marked the studs using our favorite stud finder that conveniently floats on the wall so it’s hands free – and then we drew light vertical pencil marks up the wall using a level along that line. These would act as a guide to make sure we were nailing our wood securely into the wall stud as opposed to just drywall, which makes for a nice strong hold.
our go-to nail gun. If you don’t have an obstruction like a bookcase, you’d probably just want to start at the baseboard and work your way up – but it was important to us that we have a full piece here, and not some weird sliver, so we chose this as our first piece and worked both up and down the wall from there. Again, the level helped us make sure we were starting off without anything that would end up slanting up or down as we went.
Finishing Touches
The cutting, painting, and installing process took us about two hours over the course of two days (for a total of four hours spent on the project to this point). The only reason it was spread over two days was the whole waiting-for-the-paint-to-dry thing. And by the third day, we got to the extra fun part: patching nail holes!
our IG profile page if you’re reading this later & want to go see it).
Michelle Armas and it felt like it was meant to be here. Our son affectionately calls it “his jellyfish.” (Michelle is offering prints & canvas rolls of it here).
how to use lattice to create $57 board & batten treatment from way back in 2013! We also shared how to make fancier molding in our last house and how we added thicker horizontal planking for just $31 as the duplex backsplashes.
If you’re looking for other colorful wall treatment ideas, check out this awesome detail that Angela added to the top of her closet (you can also see another amazing Angela project here!). We’re also loving this colorful planked ceiling, this rainbow planked wall, this wood wall art, and this cool multi-toned vertical design! Basically there are a whole lot of ways to grab some wood, pick your paint colors, choose your pattern / placement / spacing and make a really fun wall treatment.
And if you missed last week’s post all about our second floor deck & how that huge “outdoor room” is coming along – here’s the link to get you all caught up. The week before that we shared how our upstairs family room is shaping up, so that can be found right here. And for any other update about our Florida house, here’s an archive of posts that can get you caught up pretty quickly. We’ve covered a lot of ground in the last 4.5 months of living here!
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