Chevron Wall In A Day
Posted by M&M in Design, Graphic Murals, Techniques on Jan 8, 2012
A chevron wall pattern painted in a day.
There’s nothing like being prepared.
We painted the chevron pattern on this wall in one day.
It looks simple but it can be a disaster if you don’t think it through.
it’s worth the time to first do a layout on paper to the scale of your wall.
sketch of wall drawn to scale
When you’re ready to layout your chevron pattern on the wall, you’ll need:
- an aluminum framing square
- water soluble pencils close to the same color as the chevron. You might want to use a couple of different shades of pencils to mark it our with, because it can get confusing.
- a 4foot level
- lots of blue tape.
Use an aluminum framing square to layout 45 degree angles on wall.
After you have your chevron pattern marked out with water soluble pencils, tape it all out, making sure that you keep the tape on the outer edge of the pencil mark. That way, when you paint in the chevron, the marking line will disappear into the paint. Don’t forget to tape out the entire perimeter, as well.
The entire wall must be carefully taped out before painting.
The tape is sealed with clear glaze to prevent bleeding.
Next, we always take the time to seal the blue tape to the wall with clear glaze and a medium sized art brush. This extra step prevents “bleed”, insuring a clean line and saves a great deal of tedious touch up work at the end.
Cut in the edges before you roll out the larger areas.
Now it’s time to paint the chevron design. Our wall is base painted with Benjamin Moore 2141-50 matte finish, mixed at 50%, so that it is much paler and bluer than the swatch. For the chevron stripe we chose Benjamin Moore 1604 in semi-gloss. When you paint it on the wall, it hardly shows up but dries to just the right amount of contrast.
Note that we cut in at the adjacent edges, and also where the pattern is too tight for the roller to cover.
We used a 4” short nap roller, used for decorative finishes. We allowed the paint to dry for a couple of hours before applying the second coat.
Finally, we carefully remove all the blue tape, holding it at a 90 degree angle to the wall. Have the chevron paint and the wall paint ready for touch ups with a small flat art brush. No matter how careful you are, there will inevitably be areas of bleed and spots of paint.
Our chevron wall was accomplished in one day, with proper planning and the right tools.
The paint is applied with a 4 inch short nap roller.