standard 2-color chevron stripes are pretty straight forward.
but two colors are boring, so lets use four….or five or six or seven.
I promise this is super easy. the hardest part is the math.
paint the wall of choice with a base color – this color will act as a small chevron stripe in between each large chevron stripe. let it dry then tape up the baseboards.
you need to decide a few things: how many stripes you want, how big you want them to be, and what your color pattern will be. draw it out until you find a design you like. this is what I ended up with:
write down your colors if needed and any other notes for yourself.
measure your wall and write the measurements down on your sketch. now dissect the sketch into boxes. place vertical lines at each point – high and low – and horizontal lines between each stripe so that you have a grid of boxes. count the number of boxes and divide the wall measurement by that number to decide how big each box needs to be on the wall.
Example: my wall was 94 inches tall and I had 6 horizontal lines – so each box had to be 15.6 inches tall. The wall was 132 inches long and I had 8 vertical lines, so each box had to be 16.5 inches wide.
write down how big each box needs to be so you don’t get confused.
*make sure you measure from the ceiling to the top of the baseboard – if you measure all the way to the floor it will throw off your entire measurement.
starting from the ceiling, mark out points with a pencil that match the measurements of the height of your boxes and mark points going across that match the width of your boxes.
Now take a chalk line and matching it up to the points you marked, snap lines on the wall to make a grid.
It should look something like this when you’re done:
the genius thing about this is that where you tape to separate the big stripes, the base color will stay and act as a divider between the large stripes – so you can choose as many colors as you want. each large stripe can be a different color and it will be just as easy as if you were only using two. and the small stripe adds a different dimension to the standard chevron pattern.
so, tape. use scissors on the tape to make sure you get a clean edge as opposed to ripping it. line one edge of the tape up with the top corner of the top left box and match it to the bottom corner of the box so that you divide the box in half – choose either top or bottom of the tape, it doesn’t matter, just stay consistent. Now you’ll start from bottom to top on the next box and repeat until each box has been taped. Make sure the tape overlaps so that you have clean points. Your end result will look like this ( the boxes are visible towards the top of the photo):
once you get into a rhythm, the taping goes by really fast. I taped the entire wall in about 35-45 minutes.
now you can paint.
paint in between the tape with chosen colors – as many as you’d like. do two coats and pull the tape as soon as you’re done painting the second coat.
This will be your end result:
(I used 3 colors for the big stripes)
My point is that chevron isn’t scary.
it’s actually really easy, even with lots of colors.
now go forth into the world and paint shit chevron.
I still have lots to do in B’s new nursery before I do a tour of sorts or enter in any more contests.
But it will be even more glorious than his first room.
