My (Easy) Living Room Accent Wall

I’ve been sharing little bits and pieces of my living room decor for months and months now on Instagram Stories (if you follow us there, we are @abeatifulmess), and I’m finally ready to share the full look of things. Hooray! First, I wanted to show this super easy, but very impactful accent wall we added to our living room.

This accent wall project is totally inspired by a teal/blue version I saw on Pinterest (you can see it on Apartment Therapy). Since the other walls in this room are white, I was wanting to add some kind of accent wall that would be visually interesting but also not TOO over the top and grab all the visual attention. It was kind of like shopping for a rug that you want to be textured and feel interesting, but you don’t want too busy of a design so that it’s the only thing your eye is drawn to in the room. If that makes sense? I was looking for that in an accent wall and this totally fit the bill.

The main thing I debated over (for too long, really) was what color to do. I was wanting something on the darker side, but not black or grey. We had black walls in our last living room and we really liked it but were not looking to recreate the same space. I also was leaning toward a cool color as opposed to warm (so a blue or purple as opposed to red or orange). Finally, I landed on either a teal or a darker green.

I was leaning toward the green but I wasn’t sure. Trey was leaning toward the teal but also felt like he wasn’t sure. So finally I did what any modern blogger gal does and I just asked the internet what they thought. You can see the poll I did on our Instagram Stories above. It was pretty split too, but green won. So that just pushed us over the edge and we finally committed to the green, which is Chard from Behr paint.

With the color finally picked, I was ready to get started.

I hit up a couple thrift stores to buy all the picture frames. As you can see, I bought a lot, as it’s a pretty long wall. But all together the frames only cost a little over $100 since I bought them used—making this project super affordable as you mainly just need the frames, nails, and the paint.

My friend Ethan helped me with the painting one weekend. First, we painted the wall with two coats (it was already white so we didn’t need to prime). I also cleaned the frames and removed any glass and hardware. Then we hung the frames and painted them on the wall. I had primed a couple to see if the primed ones were easier (for less paint) and it didn’t seem to make a difference to me. All the frames needed two coats, primed or not. Once everything was dry I gave it one more good look, checking all the angles and painting any part of the frame that was still exposed.

You could choose to paint the frames before hanging, of course. But I had so many frames that just finding space in my home (that wasn’t on the floor because we have two dogs who shed like crazy most of the time) to paint them all wasn’t practical. So painting them after they were already hung worked better for me.

After everything was done, we added a small table, plants, and two ottomans to store throw blankets in (we use these when we watch movies in this room sometimes). I love how this project turned out and it’s the perfect backdrop to our movie screen too.

Here is the screen that covers this wall when it’s down (it comes out of our ceiling when you click a remote). I will share all about our projector and the screen in another post, but I did want to show you how it looks with this wall. Thanks for letting me share my accent wall, and for those of you who voted on the color we picked, a BIG thank you because we LOVE the green and are now so glad we went with it over the teal. xo. Emma

Sources: White table/Amazon, Ottomans/Target, Planters (painted)/H&M, Baskets are mostly thrifted or from Home Goods.

Credits // Author: Emma Chapman. Photography: Janae Hardy and Emma Chapman. Project Assistant: Ethan Randolph. Photos edited with A Color Story Desktop.