Alternative to Wallpaper- How to Stencil a Wall

When I moved into my house I had a vision for how I wanted to decorate and renovate most of it. There was definitely a lot of work to be done as you can see here. The den was the room that I 100% knew how I wanted to decorate. I was really excited to make it whimsical and fun with a lot of color.

Reality set in when I started researching how much wallpaper would cost. I searched to the ends of the internet to find affordable wallpaper and found nothing. From Etsy to Amazon, Target and beyond…there wasn’t what I deemed an affordable option. For my tiny 8 foot by 8 foot wall it was going to cost me upwards of $500 dollars. I don’t consider myself a cheap person, in fact I’ve made some pretty ridiculous purchases (we’ll talk about the $200 shower curtain later),but I was pretty sure I could DIY an alternative to wallpaper that I liked as much.

Stenciling – The best affordable alternative to wallpaper

I thought about a lot of different options as an alternative to wallpaper. Using fabric as wallpaper –pretty much as expensive, wood to create visual interest –wasn’t going to give me the bright fun look I wanted, using wood to create geometric shapes –I’m more of an organic shape kinda girl myself. Nothing was going to give me the look I wanted. I almost bit the bullet and spent the $500. There was also the fact though that I have textured walls. I wasn’t even completely sure that wallpaper was going to stick and look good. Finally one day I was watching this kitchen makeover on youtube. It hit me that I should stencil my wall! There are tons of places you can buy stencils, but I ended up buying mine on Etsy. The seller was super helpful and had different sizes available for different size walls.

Things to consider

A few things to consider when choosing a stencil are wall size, wall texture, and how much detail the stencil has. If you are doing a larger wall you probably want the scale of the stencil to be a bit larger. If you are doing a smaller wall you’ll probably want a smaller stencil. Another thing to consider is wall texture. My walls, like I mentioned are textured, so I avoided anything with really straight clean lines. I knew the lines would not be crisp like they would be with a flat wall. Maybe this isn’t a problem in your eyes. You do you! I chose a terrazzo print which has organic shapes, so even if the stenciled bits weren’t perfect it would still look great (crosses fingers). 

Choosing colors

Next up I chose the colors for my stencil. To do this I searched “terrazzo” on Pinterest and got inspiration there. When I found my inspiration photo I headed to Home Depot and matched as best as I could paint swatches to my photo. I ended up with 5 colors all in a satin finish by Behr.

• Sweet Roses
• Dark Denim
• Terra Cotta
• Loft Space
• Retro Pink

One was super close to the wall color, which in the end was a happy accident. I think another bold color would have overwhelmed the wall and made it look too busy. 

Let’s get started “wallpapering”

Now that I had all of my supplies, next up was just hours upon hours of painting. I failed to consider that a stencil using multiple colors was going to take waaaaay (times a million) more work than it would if I used just one or two colors. 

The actual process was quite easy. I just used painters tape to tape down the stencil and got to painting. Most stencils will be one repeat. This basically means that the pattern ends how it started. For example, one repeat would be— circle, square, triangle, circle. So that when you need to pick the stencil up you align the first circle over the last circle (hopefully that makes sense!). This makes everything nice and straight.

I had picked up a few different types of brushes and sponges to try out to apply the paint. In the end I found that the cheap foam brushes you can buy from the craft store worked best for my stencil.

I do think it really could vary from stencil to stencil what would work best. I would recommend  testing the stencil out on a piece of paper or cardboard first just to get a feel for your stencil before you get it on your wall. 

(Not So) Pro Tips-

A few things to keep in mind….Less paint is usually best, and a stippling motion usually is going to get you the best application with the crispest lines possible. Other than that patients is key! I think it took me about a month to finish the project–like I said it was pretty involved, but you could definitely get it finished way faster than I did. 

In the end the stenciled alternative to wallpaper cost a little under $80. The stencil was $46.71, the paint samples were $3.27 a piece. SO much better than the cost of wallpaper for basically the same look! 

*Disclosure: I only recommend products I would use myself and all opinions expressed here are our own. This post may contain affiliate links that at no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission.