Big, crisp shapes on your walls are in right now, and for good reason. There?s something satisfying walking into a room adorned with geometry. Triangles can lead the eye upwards in a pleasant way that emphasizes the ceiling height of a room, and there?s always at least one room in the house that can benefit from being perceived as a bigger, more inviting, and more livable space.
When undertaking geometric wall art, pay particular attention to having crisp lines. Most articles will mention the obvious choice of painter?s tape for a project like this but won?t necessarily go into how to make the best use of it. Smooth walls may be able to get away with laying down tape and ripping it right off to admire the handiwork, but if you have any kind of texture, you?re going to want to be a little more careful before committing to an evening of tedious touch-ups that could have been prevented.
The key to preventing gaps and strange edges on a textured wall is to make sure that your painter?s tape is sealed flush with the wall. No gaps. No bubbles. This can be accomplished in a variety of ways, the easiest of which is to take a little of your basecoat and paint along the inside edge of the tape before your first coat of color. The paint going from tape to wall will ensure you have a crisp line when you finally tear away your tape and that any touch-ups are minimized.
Another way of sealing down painter?s tape is to use caulk and apply along the tape/wall seam. This has the added issue of needing to be smoothed out before drying so that lumps don?t appear in the wall, but is likely your only recourse if attempting to tackle walls with heavy texture.
Regardless of how you intend to get your crisp lines, the laying out of the triangles themselves is going to involve some measuring. In order to ensure that your triangles don?t end up getting cut off towards the end of the wall, measure the height and width of the wall beforehand and divide it evenly by twice the number of triangles you?d like.
Be sure to mark the wall with something that is meant to come off afterwards if you don?t want the secrets of your craft left behind in your final product, and use a level to ensure your lines don?t veer off into the ceiling. You?re making clean triangles, not a brooding piece of German Expressionism.
When you have your grid, find your first two points on the wall, skipping a point in the middle. These are the base corners of your triangle. With a straight edge, connect them to the corresponding midpoint on the row above. That is the peak. Repeat until all of your triangles are fully laid out. If you?re concerned about crisp lines, coat the edges you?ll be painting with a layer of paint and paint away.
Once you are done, peel off your tape and admire your new wall. When the paint is dry, don?t forget to go over your grid with a washcloth and erase your scaffolding. That?s it!
