Studio Bathroom Progress (Plus, Testing Out Three New Wall Designs)

Since my wallpaper idea for the studio bathroom turned disastrous (you can read about that here), I spent some time yesterday trying to come up with a new idea for the walls. While I was mulling over some ideas, I worked on getting the wallpaper off of the walls and then finishing the wainscoting trim installation. I got all of the trim added, and I’m really pleased with how this is turning out.

I think once it’s all primed and painted white (my go-to white which is Behr Polar Bear), it’ll look great.

I’m really glad that I went with this simple design instead of trying to find a new tile. I think that any tile would have looked really busy with the wall design. And even though I wasn’t sure about the wall design when I was installing this trim, I knew one thing for sure. The wall design would include loads of color. So keeping the lower portion of the walls as calm and neutral as possible was important to me. I also figured out how to trim around the outlet, but I didn’t have time to finish that yesterday.

So now, I need to sand the wood filler on the nail holes, and then get the new trim caulked, primed, and painted. So at least the lower half of the walls is almost finished.

The main idea that I kept envisioning was using dividing the upper walls into thirds, and then painting vertical stripes in all of the colors of the wallpaper. But as soon as I got the mockup created, I could see that this probably wasn’t going to work. I thought that the squares looked busy (but I love the busyness of the squares), but this design looked too busy even for me.

I thought I could tame the design a bit by adding white lines between the colors, but that had the opposite effect. Adding the white made it look even busier.

I went ahead and tried it out on the walls of the bathroom just to see what it would look like. Of course, I’ll have a large 36-inch round mirror on the wall, and I’ll also be adding artwork to at least one wall (behind the toilet), but even with large portions of the wall covered, this was still too busy for me.

Another idea I wanted to try was adding white lines between the colors on my original square design. I liked it when I saw it like this…

But then when I put it on the walls, I wasn’t quite sure about it. It almost looks like grouted tiles, and I don’t want my walls to look like tile. On the other hand, I do like the brightness that the white adds to the design. It does look busier than the original design, although it doesn’t look nearly as busy as the vertical stripes with the white lines.

But when I compare it to the original design, I think I still lean towards this one.

There’s something about this design that seems more pleasing to my eye without the white lines.

I’ll be honest. I was really hoping that the one with the white lines would work out because it would be SO much easier and faster to paint. I could tape off all of the squares with 1/4-inch painters tape in one step and then paint the squares in one step. Without the white lines separating the squares, it will be a process of taping off certain squares, painting them, and letting them dry. Then taping off more squares, painting them, and letting them dry. I’ll have to do that over and over until they’re all painted. But I think it will be worth it to get the look I want.

So after that whole exercise, I’m back to the original design…in paint. I have no idea how long it will take me to paint all of those squares, but I’m up for the challenge. I’ve done much more tedious painting projects before, so painting squares might end up being very relaxing and enjoyable. I’ll just need to find a really good, long podcast to listen to, put my headphones on to drown out any distractions, and get busy.