DIY: Painting Striped Walls

There are so many fun decorating ideas and interior design ideas I would like to implement in my house but with the kids still pretty young, I can't really do many of them since I would probably end up having hand prints or other toddler designs added. So I am holding off on most of them.

But I figured since our powder room is pretty small, I could satisfy my need to re-design and hopefully the kids wouldn't be too keen on adding their own designs in that room.

One thing I've seen on Pinterest that I have really wanted to apply in my house is STRIPED WALLS. And the powder room felt like it would be a good place to apply it since it would add a fun element to such a small space. I decided to apply HORIZONTAL STRIPES to just one wall since I think it would be overwhelming if all the walls in that small space was striped.

I'm not even going to post before pictures because this room as the worst lighting ever. It also has an oval red and white stain glass window which limits designs and colors that I could use. After looking over many paint chips at Home Depot, I picked a light grey color that had a slight red tint as the new wall color and would add white stripes to our accent wall. After my husband painted all the walls the new light grey color, honestly you couldn't really tell the difference between the new color and the old color (a generic looking yellow). BUT after we applied the white stripes it was a totally different story!

I did some research on how other people have executed striped walls and found this site (classyclutter.net) particularly helpful. Other people recommend using a laser leveler but we don't own one of those, and many people seem to say it isn't a good idea. We used a regular leveler and measured down our wall, marking every 9".

* John, the best husband! Always agreeing and doing most of the work when it comes to projects around the house that I dream up!

One of the BEST TIPS I learned from the above site was to paint along the painters tape with an almost dry paint brush to ensure you don't get any leakage and ruin your striped look. Then to remove the tape pretty much right after you are done painting to get a nice crisp line. ONE thing I would like to ADD though is that even though your paint brush shouldn't be dripping wet, you might want to paint along the tape area a few times to ensure you have enough coverage. The worst thing to happen would be for you to remove the tape and then realize you have streaks along the edge of your stripes.

 *Taping our borders. Measuring and taping probably took the most time in this project.

* I know it looks like my husband is doing all the work but I really did help out. He did the areas on top and I did the bottom.

Finally the FINISHED LOOK, this is probably one of the better pictures showing the stripes in their true colors since I was able to take it during the day.

And a not so good picture but you can see more of the whole effect on the room.

There are a couple of other things I want to do for my powder room re-design that unfortunately our busy schedule has not allowed us to finish yet but when we do finally get it done, I'll share more photos here!

Do you like the whole stripe wall detail as much as I do? Done any redecorating or redesigning in your house lately?

Zi