DIYer Creates Luxurious Bedroom Wall Panelling For Under £100
- Wall panelling can be expensive, with professional costs averaging over £200
- DIYer Luke, 22, created luxurious bedroom panelling himself for half the price
- He picked up MDF and paint from B&Q and Homebase for the budget job
It’s easy for walls to look plain or dull when they’ve been painted a single colour and left for a while. That’s why many people are going for options such as wall panelling - but it can be expensive if you get a professional in to do it.
One DIYer has shared his budget hack for making wall panels at home for under £100 with paint and MDF. Luke Watkins, 22 from South Wales who works in marketing and posts on YouTube as Project Real Home, told money-saving community LatestDeals.co.uk: ‘I got this idea when looking for inspiration on sites such as Pinterest and Instagram.
‘My girlfriend and I wanted to use a neutral colour palette in our master bedroom and looked for a way to incorporate this into the room without just painting the entire wall. When we saw wall panels online, we knew that we wanted to create something like this for ourselves. We then decided to create the panels about two-thirds up the wall to leave some white space to brighten up the room.
‘I went to B&Q first, picking up Valspar paint matched to Farrow & Ball in the shade London Stone for £27. I also got No More Nails glue for under £5, wood filler for under £5 and Valspar primer for £25. Then I went to Homebase and picked up two packs of 6 MDF boards, 10cm x 120cm, for £38. All in all, the supplies cost just under £100.
‘The first step was to measure up. I measured the total width of the wall, then the width of one plank. I decided the number of planks I would like to go across the wall, and considered that the number of gaps in between would be one less - for example, if there were 7 planks, there would be 6 gaps.
‘I multiplied the number of planks by the width of one plank - so for 7 planks with widths of 12cm each, it would be 84cm total. I then took the number for the width of the wall and deducted the 84cm. Then I divided the remaining number by the number of gaps, and this told me what the width of each gap should be.
‘The next step was to cut the boards to the length I wanted. I pre-cut the panels so that I could ensure they went two-thirds of the way up the wall as I wanted. If you are going to have a board going horizontally across the top or bottom of your paneling, make sure you have a board or two that will fit the measurement.
‘Then I attached the bottom horizontal MDF boards to the wall. I used No More Nails for this job, along with a spirit level to ensure each board was sitting straight as I attached it. It’s important to get your measurements right so that the board fits across the entire wall.
‘After that it was time to attach the vertical MDF boards to the wall using the same method and tools, ensuring that I measured the correct distance between each wall. The final boards I attached were the top horizontal ones.
‘I used caulking to fill in the gaps between the boards and the wall, then used frog tape to cover the parts of the wall I didn’t want painting - such as the skirting boards and the wall above the panelling.
‘To prime the boards, I used a coat of primer so the paint would go on nicely and be the exact colour I wanted. I allowed it to dry and then got painting. I needed two coats for the coverage to be good and after removing the frog tape I was done.
‘Cutting the boards to the correct length was the biggest challenge during this project. Luckily I have a circular saw which made it much easier to get a perfect cut on the MDF boards. Figuring out how much room to leave between the boards was also a challenge but luckily I figured it out fairly quickly and did the calculations on paper.
‘We are now really happy with how much better the room looks, especially once we added the bed back in and some decor.’
Tom Church, Co-Founder of LatestDeals.co.uk, said: ‘According to Check A Trade, the average cost of wall panelling with a professional is over £200, so Luke has basically done the job himself for half the price. His room looks luxurious and relaxing now - and it must be satisfying to know he did it all himself.’
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