When I used to think of wood paneling it would bring up images in my mind of Swedish style saunas and tongue and groove cladded ceilings.
This completely changed when I saw the more traditional cladding found on Instagram that is way more beautiful! I owe my love of cladding to a few different accounts that have cladding in their beautiful homes and have even installed it themselves! (@31thesquare @comedowntothewoods)
Seeing these accounts and instantly having Insta envy I thought surely this is something we can attempt in our own home. Prime location for our next DIY disaster would be in the master bedroom. A nice area that if we pulled it off would look lovely and not too much on public show that if we made complete balls up of it, it wouldn’t stick out like a sore thumb.
We started to research how to install paneling and stumbled across a few videos online, it looked like people were just sticking strips of MDF to their walls. We thought there is no way it can be that simple, but it really is (almost). With our new found confidence it was off to the local DIY store to order the wood.
What we ordered was in fact a sheet of 12mm MDF board that was cut into 100mm strips, making sure there was enough for both the horizontal and vertical strips. At the same time we ordered some instant grab adhesive (basically no more nails) and some wood filler, we were set to go!
The next day the wood was delivered and it was time to make it up as we went along as we tried to install the paneling. After a little bit of math’s (basically working out how big you want the squares to be in your paneling) we stuck the vertical strips of wood to the wall using the adhesive.
Now we are not experts at this, so I have no idea if this is the right way of doing it but it’s how we did it and it is still stuck to the wall so I’ll take that as a win.
Once these were secure we then cut the horizontal strips to the size of the gaps between the vertical strips and stuck them in place. As we are total amateurs in all of our DIY some of these cuts weren’t very square so we needed the wood filler to come to our rescue. I used it to fill the gaps where the joins didn’t quite meet evenly to make our craftsmanship look better than it actually was! Hooray for wood filler!
All that was left to do now was a quick sand to smooth off the wood filler; a coat of wood primer and then two coats of Farrow and Ball emulsion in Pigeon and the job was ‘a gooden’.
I am genuinely amazed by how much of a difference it has made in the room considering it is just basically sticking some wood to a wall, however, I am now considering taking out shares in MDF (is that even possible?). I now can’t look at a single wall in our house without thinking “would it look better with paneling on it”?
Now that we had such a statement wall we wanted to break the room up with a splash of blush pink (husband was totally on board for this I might add!). We purchased two velvet bolster style cushions from Wilko for a bargain £6 each!
Wallace Cotton approached us to collaborate for a sponsored post and as we would only ever consider it if the items fitted with our home, we were so happy to see this beautiful handmade Chloe wool throw in their catalogue.
We had been looking for a Merino wool style of throw for ages. It’s a runner style throw, chunky and ridiculously soft. It feels heavy and luxurious and has been so comforting to have over my feet during the horrific weather recently.
The colour matched our cushions perfectly and I love how it breaks up the green in our room but still looks soft and relaxing. They also do some bloody lovely Pompom throws too which I’ve got my eye on for my upcoming birthday!
If you’re looking for new accent pieces for your bedroom or home then definitely look them up here.
Good luck with creating your dream bedroom.
This is brilliant, just the advice I needed. I might give it a go in my master bedroom, it sounds so easy!
Author
Definitely give it a go x
Thank you, now the OH has no excuse haha!!! xx
Looks great. Would love to do this in our bedroom but being an old house the walls aren’t straight! I wondered if you faced this and how you got around it? Thanks, Karen
Author
We are really lucky that our walls are straight. To be honest I’m not sure we would’ve tackled it if the weren’t. Obviously it’s still completely an option for you as probably all the buildings which originally have panelling are all wonky! I guess maybe you’d need to re-re-plaster first ? Good luck
Looks amazing! Where is your bed from?
Author
Thank you, it’s from Next
This looks great and would love to have a go. Out of interest how did you work out the width of the lats to keep your squares even?
Know this sounds daft, but what method did you use to work out how many squares to do?
Hey! Love this! Could you advise which tool you used to cut the horizontal strips of wood?
Author
Hi we ordered them pre cut and then used them for both the horizontal and vertical strips x
Hi! Where did you order them from pre-cut?
Author
Hi, from Wickes
Did you order this online to be delivered pre cut or did you have to go into store? Xx
Author
We ordered them in 2.4m lengths and cut them ourselves x
Hey.
Did you pin your wood to the wall? Or how long did it take for your glue to ‘set’?
If you used pins did you pull them out after the glue had set?
Author
Hi we used no more nails glue. I think there’s a link I’m the blog to this. We painted it the day after to ensure the glue was dry
Hello,
The smaller parts horizontally – what are the size of them please?
Also how did you work out how far down the wall each one needed to be?
What is the name of the paint you use
Author
It’s farrow and ball pigeon
Hi thanks so much for the tips, we’re about to attempt it! Did you use emulsion or eggshell on the wood? X
Author
Hi it was emulsion x
Hi Stacey
Looks amazing!!
What tool did you use for the cutting?
Author
Hi, Adam used just a regular hand saw x
Hi,
This looks amazing. Can I ask what type of Mdf you used? Standard, mosture resistance or fire retartdent?
Thanks,
Hassan
Author
Hi it was standard
Hi, really love the wall, you’ve done a brilliant job! How much did that project cost you to do?
Author
Just the price of the wood so about £150
Hi, what depth mdf did you use please?
Author
Hi it’s 10mm
Wow, that looks fantastic. Thank you for sharing all the tips and answering the questions. I feel a hallway redo coming on….
Can anyone tell me how to work out how to get the squared evenly spaced etc?
Author
It’s tricky! Work out how many boxes you want. Eg 5 boxes. Measure width of wall and subtract the total width of the vertical strips of MDF. Eg. We had 6 strips at 10cm each so 60cm.
Divide that number by how many boxes you want. Hope that makes sense
Looks awesome! When you say you ordered it pre cut (in the comments), were Wickes selling strips of MDF in the correct width? Or did you cut it all down from full 2440mm sheets with a hand saw?
Author
If you ask at your DIY store they will often cut it down for you
What adhesive did you use?
Author
Hi it was No more nails