If you’re sick of looking at the same solid colors of paint in your home, a fun way to mix thing up is by adding visual stimuli to the room with a painted checkered wall. Thanks to a good online tutorial by Better Homes and Garden, you can do just that – all on your own. Here’s how…
Tools and Materials You’ll Need
3 shades of paint
Pencil
Step 1: For more depth, you want to think flannel/plaid checkers – not chess board checkered patterns. This means you’ll be selecting three colors. First choose your dark color. Then for the second darkest color in your pattern, have the paint salesperson to mix your dark color at 25%. For the lightest colored stripe, mix your medium paint color with white – a one-to-one ratio works best.
Step 2: Whether or not your walls are already white, you’ll want to paint a fresh base coat of white for this checkered wall. It will make a big difference in the room by making sure every wall looks crisp and clean. Let the white paint dry before starting the checkered pattern
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Step 3: Using your metal ruler, your level, and a pencil, draw your checkered pattern on the wall creating vertical and horizontal lines evenly spaces spaced 4 inches apart. You can increase the distance or shorten the distance between lines for a larger or smaller pattern on the wall.
Step 4: Using your angled brush, paint alternating horizontal lines with your lightest paint color. This can be done freehanded or using painters tape for more crisp lines. Let paint dry.
Step 5: Paint alternating vertical lines with your medium shade of paint.
Step 6: Finally, mask off the overlapping squares of your medium and light paint and paint them with your darkest shade of paint.