Easy DIY Hand-Painted Brushstroke Accent Wall

Hey friends! It’s Thalita from The Learner Observer and I’m back over here today to share with you a super easy hand-painted brushstroke accent wall that literally anyone can do – I somehow managed to get this done with 3 month old twins at home! Thank goodness for husbands who hold down the fort while you try crazy DIY projects, right?

To give you a little perspective, here’s what the wall looked like before:

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How to Paint a Faux Wallpaper Brushstroke Accent Wall

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https://youtu.be/qAQwlL_-3b4

 

To start, here’s what you’ll need:

• a size 8 craft brush like this
• scrap paper
• paint of your choice (I used Fusion Mineral Paint in Coal Black)
• about 2-3 hours

I tested out a few patterns before committing to one, so grab a few pieces of scrap paper and get painting! I decided to keep it pretty simple with the patterns because I have a lot of others happening in the room, and as much as I love a pattern mix, you have to be careful not to overdo it.

Once these guys were dry and I had a few I liked, I taped them to the wall, and here’s the most important thing I did: I took photos! Why is this important? Because it helps you to (for lack of a better word) see the bigger picture. You somehow become aware of the room as a whole and how the pattern looks with other things in the space. I actually like to do this when I’m trying out anything new in a room. Give it a shot!

This helped me see that the thicker lines were a bit too bold for the room. Actually, my husband saw that right away, but I needed the photo to help me. I did change the pattern slightly by making the lines longer, but they stayed thin.

As far as “how” to do this…there’s really no equation. You have to just kind of go for it. To help me along, I taped the paper with the pattern to the wall right beside the spot I was painting and made sure I worked in small areas, working with about a two-foot wide space, starting at the top of the wall and going all the way to the bottom. You can see here that I broke my own rules a little bit, but generally I worked within a small area.

And here is the finished wall!

I love that it’s imperfect, but I’ve had several people ask me “where I got that wallpaper”, which is kind of awesome. It’s just so nice not to have a big empty wall anymore, and you can see how the whole thing fits in with our gallery wall as well.

I’ve asked myself so many times why I didn’t do this sooner. Oh, right… I was hugely pregnant and then busy with newborn twins. Better late than never, right?

I did keep it going even behind the shelves next to the daybed just in case we ever end up moving things around.

The great thing about a pattern like this is that it’s really easy to paint around things and have it still look “natural.” Here’s a close-up of it:

The natural brushstrokes and the fact that the lines aren’t all completely opaque are part of what I love most about this pattern for the extra bit of dimension we get from it. Also, the boys seem to love staring at it!

Have you ever tried a hand painted accent wall before? Would you dare? I can tell you that for a few bucks and a couple of hours, it’s well worth it and is certainly a lot less effort than wallpapering or stencilling! I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Until next time!

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