DIY: Adding Unique Designs with Stencils

Stencils might seem a little childish, but, they are a powerful tool for leaving a strong impression on your guests. From refreshing flower designs to simple columns, you will be adding a bold conversation starter. As you’d imagine, using any sort of stencil is going to be extra work and materials. Be aware that stencil projects may add hours to a fairly simple paint job and be ready to be patient for maximum results.

There are many kinds of stencils available, from home made to store bought. Some stencils are meant to be disposed of after a single use, while others may be have paint-blocking sealants that activate similar to tape. For those sorts of stencils, I highly recommend ‘activating’ that sealant by simply paint over the stencil with the undercoat. If your stencil is going to leak, its best for it to leak the correct color, white to white. (Make sure to remove and replace the stencil so you don’t glue it to the wall of course!) It would be a tragedy to pull up a stencil and find thousands of small red dots seeped through! It may seem obvious, but, this will make error correction a lot easier later on.

More intricate designs are more labor intensive and slow. You can expect a simple stencil to double the work time for a project. For our own pictured project, we had a stencil of limited size, which required moving the stencil over and over, carefully aligning and taping before use. That sort of limited work area made it so our project took an extra four hours, split over two days to fully complete! Of course, if you’re trying to get a good estimate of time, or, suggestions on what colors might contrast best, your local Mallory Paint Store has Color Experts who are ready to assist! An ounce of prevention is worth hours of trying to fix your project, after all!