We recently finished a huge makeover of our girls’ shared bedroom (all within a super busy 24-hour period) and one of the highlights of the room was the accent wall behind their beds. I decided to tackle a DIY painted ombré design on the accent wall and I love the way it turned out!
Here’s a step by step of how I did it:
1. Pick Your Colors
I already had an area rug and accent pillows that I needed the colors to tie into. So I used the rug and pillows to help me see how the colors all looked together. Get multiple paint swatches! Even if you think you like the way they look in the store, get extras. I ended up using a different swatch for the lightest green (instead of the one pictured above). It’s also best to look at the colors together in bright natural light. As bad as I wanted to decide on the colors the night I picked them out, I knew the yellow-tinted light in our room could skew the shades. So I waited until the following morning, turned off the yellow light and opened all the curtains so the natural white light could shine on the colors.
2. Measure and Mark Your Lines
I decided on 4 colors for the ombré wall. You could do as little as 3 or maybe a couple more than 4 depending on the size of your wall and how busy you want it to be. The ceiling in this room is a few inches shy of 8 feet. So I measured 24 inch sections starting from the bottom (so the top section would be a few inches shy of 2 feet). You don’t have to worry about getting perfect lines here, just make sure you’re overall lines aren’t slanted. I individually measured both sides of the wall and 2 more spots near the middle and then just eyeballed it to “connect the dots” from each of the 4 spots across the wall to make each horizontal line.
3. Paint Your Sections
I did the cutting in first, then I just used 4 individual rollers and trays to paint the sections. Again, don’t stress about getting perfectly clean straight lines here, you’re going to blend everything together eventually. Don’t worry about blending yet, because odds are, you’ll have to paint a couple coats anyway. It’s best to let these sections (mostly) dry before you start blending. I learned that if you try to do it all when it’s still wet, you have a greater chance of uncovering the wall color underneath.
4. Start Blending
Once you’ve let your painted sections dry (at least mostly) then you’re ready to blend them. I painted and went down to eat dinner and came back to blend. This part is a little tricky (and a good arm workout). It’s obviously easier to blend wet paint than dry, BUT if you try to blend from your original painted sections before letting them dry, you’ll scrape the paint right off and see the color underneath. So my way around this was to keep all 4 rollers in their respective paint colors so I could easily paint over the dry sections with a little fresh paint for blending. Keeping 4 individual rollers and trays makes it easier to change back and forth. I chose to start blending from the top down. So I started with my lightest paint colored roller and quickly painted a small, rolled, line as close to the line where the colors meet. Then I switched over to my next lightest color, the second color from the top, and did the same thing. Then with a regular paint brush, I blended the colors is small, quick X marks all overlapping and moving up and down between the 2 wet colors. This is the part that will give you a sore arm because you have to blend pretty fast and you have to paint pretty hard to really blend the colors. I tried a sponge here originally, but sponges are ideal for soaking up paint, not so much blending it. You have to eyeball the blending as you go. Try to make sure that the sections are blended up and down at around the same areas on the wall. Then repeat these same steps for all of your blended lines.
Tip: Wet paint looks different than dry paint! So don’t be alarmed if your newly blended wall looks a bit off before everything has a chance to dry. Mine didn’t look like full light to dark ombré as some of the wet paint was lighter than the dry versions of the same color.
5. Let Dry and LOVE Your New Wall
Enjoy the ombré! Hang some photos or prints or shelves and enjoy your newest successful DIY project.
If you use this tutorial to paint your own ombré wall, make sure to tag us (@phillipsflips) in your instagram photos or share them to our hashtag, #mycultivatedhome I love seeing how you incorporate ombré into your home!