I have been brainstorming ideas for an accent wall in our informal dining room for months! I wanted something classy, but fun. So I landed on creating a DIY board and batten accent wall. This project was simple, affordable and completely changed the look of the space!
Supplies:
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- Batten strips: Poplar plywood sheet cut into 3inX8ft strips
- Primer
- Paint
- Stud finder
- Tape measure
- Painters tape
- Liquid nails
- Nail Gun/air compressor/nails
- Miter saw or laminate cutter
- Caulk
- 8’ Quarter round (or another edging you prefer)
- Sanding block
- Paper towels
1 Cut MDF sheet into batten strips
We bought two 4’X8’ sheets of MDF at Lowe’s and had an employee cut the sheets down to 3”X8’ strips.
2 Paint Wall and strips
You will need to paint your wall the color you plan to create your board and batten design. We chose pure white from Sherwin Williams. I also highly recommend priming and painting your batten strips before you put them on the wall.
3 Determine Design
I chose to do seven vertical batten lines and two horizontal batten lines on our wall. The horizontal batten lines are 18in from the top and 18in from the bottom.
4 Secure border batten pieces to the wall
Add the border batten pieces along the crown molding, along the baseboard, and along the ends walls. I used our laminate cutter to cut all batten pieces during this project and it worked out SO well!
5 Spacing
Now comes the hard part. Determining the spacing between the vertical battens is not something you should do when you are tired and annoyed… believe me, I know from experience 🙂 We first put the middle batten piece on the wall, by finding the center of the wall. Then divided the space to the left of the middle batten by three to get the spacing for the rest of the vertical pieces. TIP: make sure to measure from the center of the middle batten piece to the center of the end batten pieces. See image below for more details.
6 Secure Vertical battens to the wall
Use liquid nails and painters tape to secure the vertical batten pieces to the wall. We decided to secure most of the batten pieces with liquid nails and painters tape because most of the battens were not on studs. This made for easy installation. I also didn’t have to fill in very many nail holes!
7 Secure horizontal pieces of batten to the wall
These pieces will fit in between each vertical batten. I wanted these pieces to be 18 inches from the top border batten piece. To be safe, I measured each space between each of the vertical batten like this:
We then secured them to the wall with liquid nails and painters tape. I again used our laminate cutter to cut all pieces for this project. This way I didn’t have to go in and out of our house to use the miter saw. The laminate cutter really saved time and sanity!
8 Caulk
I decided to caulk every place where the batten pieces met the wall and all nail holes. This makes the design look more finished. If you want a closer look at how I did this watch my Instagram Highlight video.
Add border edging
I ended up having to add quarter round to the ends of the wall. With an older house, you can pretty much bet the walls are not straight. So by doing this it helped hide the space on the ends and finished off the design.
9 Paint
Paint over all the places you caulked to make sure the entire wall is the same color. Paint any other places that need touch-ups.
This project was so cheap and easy to do that I am so surprised how much it transformed the space! It makes our informal dining room seem bigger and fancier 🙂 Now I just need a small table and some chairs to finish off the space 😉
Check out my Instagram highlight story for videos on this tutorial!

XOXO EMILY
Oh, wow, Emily! The accent wall looks great. It gives a room that “finished” look. I think it would look great in my guest room. Thank you for the idea!
Thank you so much John!! Good luck with the guest room! I’m sure it will look beautiful!
What a great project! Thank you for linking up at Wall to Wall DIY Wednesday!
Thank you for hosting! Loving all the inspiration 🙂
I love how your board and batten turned out! How thick was the MDF board that you used?
Thank you so much! It was very thin, about .115 inch. Here is the link: https://www.lowes.com/pd/47-75-in-x-7-98-ft-Smooth-Brown-Hardboard-Wall-Panel/3014304
I love it!
Thank you so much Elisa!
Looks great!
Thank you! It was a fun project 🙂
Hey. How many areas in a large space would you add board and batten? I would like to put it in my kitchen (eat area, small wall, foyer (small area 4×4) and dining area (one wall)
THANK YOU!! for the taking time to post this & give such thorough and detailed information. I just finished my dining room – and I love it! My wall was almost the same size as yours so it was easy to just apply the same concepts as your room. THANK YOU AGAIN!
You are so welcome! I am so happy my tutorial was helpful 🙂