LESSONS LEARNED: STENCIL PAINTING
Thank goodness this turned out well. This. Project. Took. So. Much. Time. And. Effort. Honestly, I LOVE this room (I even had someone working on my home ask about my beautiful “wallpaper” and I almost fell over because I was so excited); but I am not sure I would tackle this project again.
The stencil is simple enough, once you get the hang of it. But it is really hard to get the hang of it… the amount of paint to use, the pressure to use, lining up the stencil, etc. And that is not mentioning those corners and areas the stencil does not fit or bend. About 60% of this room was easy breezy with the stencil. About 30% challenging but following the instructions, it was not terrible, just time consuming and tedious. And about 10% painstaking, doing it by hand, cursing the entire project. I think this would be a lot easier for an accent wall, or a room with minimal doors, windows, etc.
Here are the materials I used:
Herringbone wall stencil (CuttingEdgeStencils on Etsy), $39.95 (linked here). It is 30 in. by 20.5 in. This company was great. Their instructions are user friendly and incredibly thorough.
Foam roller (4 in.)
Paint (Benjamin Moore- Hale Navy, flat)
Painter’s tape
Here are my lessons learned about stencil painting:
Choose the right stencil. The herringbone pattern was super challenging. I would label it “not for beginners.” It achieved the look I wanted, but probably not a starter stencil.
Read the instructions. And then read them again. And then read them a third time before you start painting.
Practice. Practice. Practice. I would suggest practicing a pretty large section (I did it on a piece of cardboard) to make sure you practice lining up the stencil, rolling/brushing the appropriate amount of paint, how to avoid paint bleeding, etc.
Clean the paint off of your stencil if it is going to take you more than one day to paint. The paint will build up on the stencil and it is not a huge deal, but I think it will make your life easier.
If you aren’t doing an accent wall only, the chances of your stencil lining up perfectly all the way around the room is slim. So I would suggest making sure the “misalignment” is behind a door or not somewhere your eye goes to when looking at the room. If I did this project again, I would rework how I went around the room because my “misalignment” ended up in one of the visible corners; I think I did a pretty good job stenciling it by hand (and with painter’s tape) to minimize the visibility of my mistake, but that took a lot of time and effort. I included a picture below of how I had to add painter’s tape and freehand it. This was my fault as a first-time stenciler though. When I was going around the room and hit the window, it was incredibly difficult to fit the stencil in the corner and in between the window and the wall, so to keep the project moving I went to the other side of my wall and went around the room the opposite way. Big mistake.
Lastly, don’t worry about the little imperfections as you go. You can do touch-ups at the end. But also when it is finished, your eye looks at the overall pattern and less at the slight bleeding/darker spots/uneven areas that seem glaring as you stencil.
