My whole house is white walls. I love how the light bounces from the windows and the airy feeling the color white creates. But I also love patterns! It adds an element of surprise to your interior design. 

After doing my DIY Striped Black and White Marble Table, I knew I wanted to thread a striped pattern throughout my home, but I wanted to echo the pattern in a different way wherever I could.

Wallpaper was the answer to my small powder room! I found a lot of wallpaper designs I liked, including just a black and white bold stripe wallpaper, but it felt too similar to the look of my marble table. 

I ended up liking these plaid designs best:

 

Plaid was a perfect choice because vertical lines make my eight foot ceiling appear taller and the horizontal stripes make my bathroom appear wider. 

I DIYed this project partly because of cost, but the decision was mostly because we rent! I knew I needed to do a peel and stick wallpaper, but I didn’t want to pay $100+ a roll on something I couldn’t take with me when we left. I also knew I didn’t want to sacrifice a high quality and high end look for my home decor; which can happen when you buy cheaper rolls.

Enter: Decorating with washi tape like wall art.

This DIY wall is easily modified with just stripes, mini plus signs, channels like Kelly Wearstler, or really anything you want–for a fraction of the price. This project cost me a total of $15 and just a couple hours of my time.

What you need:

Black Washi Tape (it took 6 rolls for my small bathroom accent wall)
Pencil
Measuring Tape
Scissors (no special tape scissors, just regular scissors)
Ruler

How I planned my wall:

Step 1:

Measure your wall and find your wall’s center.

*For my wall, I wanted my center to be my built in toilet paper holder; but a good way to do this is to measure your wall in inches, and divide by 2. This will be your center.

Step 2:

Since my Washi tape was 2 inches wide, I eyeballed that I wanted about 1″ from each side of my wall’s center for my first 2 washi tape vertical lines. I used my pencil and marked where each washi tape would be positioned.

Note before you start laying down washi tape: I put marks vertically where my tape should go all up and down the wall. This helped me keep my washi tape straight. I did this for every stripe.

Step 3:

Create the first direction pattern. I used the format 4 – 2 – 4 -2 for the first direction of stripes until my wall was covered. For my wall, I did 3 inches in between each stripe, and 8 inches between each grouping of stripes.

Step 4:

Once your wall is covered in vertical lines, you’ll do the same process, but start at the bottom or top. Now you’ll space your stripes with even spacing in the pattern 3 – 2 – 1 – 3 -2 – 1

As far as how far apart my spacing goes, I maintained 2″ in between each stripe and eyeballed between each grouping of stripes. For the stripe grouping, I did 6″ from the bottom then laid the grouping of 3 stripes, then 4″ for the 2 stripe grouping, then 6″, then started over with a 6″ space before the grouping of 3 again.

If you wanted to be exact, I would do your first set of [3 – 2 – 1] grouping, then measure the distance all the way up the wall for where each grouping should begin.

Tips: For an artistic interpretation, use frog tape instead and paint colors over it! It’ll make a great feature wall for your bathroom, living room, dining room, or anywhere you need some accent wall ideas. If you use paint, just make sure every part of the tape is completely on the wall so it doesn’t bleed when you paint. Let the paint dry completely before pulling up the tape. 

 

So happy my white powder bathroom has some personality now! Can’t wait to see what you do with this idea.