Want an accent wall? If you want your space to look put-together and beautiful, your accent wall needs to be properly planned out. You can’t eeny-minny-miny-moe your way out of this one! Aside from choosing a color, there should be a fair bit of thought and consideration that goes into picking which wall to paint. Here are a few tips to help you choose.
Find the Focal Point
Walk into the room and notice which wall your eye is naturally drawn to first. This will be a good candidate for your accent wall. That spot is already the focal point of the space, the accent wall will serve to highlight it further.
Why do this? You don’t want to feel like the room has too much going on. Having an accent wall separate from the room’s natural focal point can make things confusing. Limiting the space to having just one focal area helps ensure this doesn’t happen.
However, note that this can still change. Though it may be a good candidate, some other factors may not make it suitable as an accent wall after all, such as the wall’s shape and size discussed below.
Think About Shape and Size
When you’re painting an accent wall, you’re essentially filling out the color of a giant shape in the room. So, once finished, your eyes are going to see the accent wall as something that stands out and contrasts from the rest of the space.
Hence, it will be best if the accent wall is a pleasing, clean shape to look at and not irregular or asymmetrical. This would most likely be a wall that’s a simple square or rectangular without windows or doors. Otherwise, your “giant shape” can look like it has cutouts on it. This is, however, not always the case. Framing a beautiful door by painting the wall around it can also be a smart move.
Next, consider size too. Painting just several small portions—because there are large windows or wall-mounted cabinets (in a different color) occupying the wall, for example—can make the room feel messy and jumbled up. Your eyes will read these as shapes scattered about.
Read the Room
The room itself can also dictate where your accent wall may look best. In a bedroom, for example, the wall flushed with the bed’s headboard is usually the focal point of the room. Therefore, it’s also typically chosen as the accent wall. In the living room, this may be the wall where the TV is.
And if you have a long rectangular room, painting one of the smaller walls is a better option. Choosing one of the large ones as an accent wall can make the room feel unbalanced and even longer.
Color can also be used to divide a space and define areas of the home. In a studio-type condominium, for example, painting the wall nearest the dining table can further stress that that’s the dining area.
Test It Out
Sometimes, it’s difficult to tell if your planned accent wall is going to work out or not. The Boysen app can help you form a better picture—quite literally.
On the Boysen app, choose the “Visualizer” tool. The Visualizer lets you take a photo (or choose one from your phone’s gallery) and color it in using any of the more than a thousand Boysen paint colors available. This way, you get to see what your accent wall may look like but also get to test it out using actual paint colors already. Amazing, right?
After all that is said, remember that your space is your own. What’s discussed above are simply guidelines. You can choose to follow them or go against them. As long as you’re happy with how your home turns out, then it’s a job well done! If you liked this blog post, feel free to subscribe to the Let it B newsletter to stay up-to-date with all that’s going on here at MyBoysen.com.