DIY: How to Paint Chevron Stripes

Hi all — I’m excited to introduce our final new Fresh Face, Morgan Cullen from CasaCullen. Morgan and her handy hubby, Walt, tackle huge projects in their Austin home seemingly every week. (Seriously, when do you guys sleep?!) One of my favorite projects is the beautiful chevron stripes they painted in their new baby’s nursery. Here’s Morgan, giving you the step-by-step. – Rachel

So maybe you’re already thinking, You’re just painting stripes on a wall, how difficult can that be? Well, we’ve discovered there’s a right way and a very wrong way to tackle painting stripes on a wall. When done correctly, stripes can truly elevate the design status of any room. But painting stripes that are bleeding onto the adjacent wall isn’t going to look too hot. Check out the tutorial below for step-by-step directions on getting the process right. (Note that we started with our base color — the lighter shade — already on the wall. We painted the stripes in a contrasting darker color.)

Step 1: First step, lay out your wall in a grid format and sketch where you want your chevrons to fall. Some like their chevron stripes to be really compact and dense. We opted for bigger chevrons, which actually makes the process much easier:

Step 2: Using a chalk marker, completely lay out your grid on the wall. We’ll admit that removing the blue chalk from the wall wasn’t a quick and tidy process. So if you don’t want to wipe the dry wall with a damp towel multiple times, mark your grid with as minimal chalk/pencil marks as you can:

Step 3: Then, using painter’s tape, start plotting out your chevron stripes. (FYI: We used two different colors of painter’s tape for no other reason than we ran out of blue and starting using green!)

*MAKE SURE to run your finger all along the grooves on the tape. Don’t use anything other than your finger and press the entire sides of your painter’s tape into the textured grooves on your wall. This is a super important step, don’t skip it. It’s time intensive and your finger might start to hurt, but you’ll thank us later:

Step 4: Now that you have your chevrons laid out, you think you’re ready to paint the contrasting color on? Wrong! For this step, you’ll actually paint over the edges of your painter’s tape with the original color. Yep, the same color as the wall right now. Why? Because you want that original color of paint to seep into all textures in the wall and make a paint seal so that you have a perfectly straight line when you finally do add the contrasting stripe color.

Here’s a close-up to give you a better idea of what we’re talking about. Make sure you fully cover the edge of the painter’s tape with the original wall color before you paint on the contrasting stripe color. Got it? Great! Now let that dry for a few hours before adding the second color.

Step 5: Add your second color after you’ve let the paint fully dry from the previous step. (No need to wait overnight; an hour or two will suffice):

Step 6: Now your wall is completely painted in contrasting shades and you’re all ooohing and aaaahing all over the place. It’s time to remove the tape. MAKE SURE to remove the painter’s tape BEFORE the paint is dry! Why? Ripping off tape when it’s totally dry will crack and peel the paint. We let ours dry for an hour and then super slowly removed the tape. We had a super clean and straight line:

Step 9: Now, kick back, wait for that gorgeous wall to dry and then start decorating! Feel free to head over to CasaCullen and check out our tutorial, in greater depth:

Have you painted a pattern or stripes on a wall in your home? Share below!