If you’ve seen photos of the interior of our house, then you’ll know we love bold patterns and bright colours. In fact, there’s only one room and the downstairs loo that use a neutral colour palette.

Slowly, we’ve been getting more adventurous with our DIY projects over the years. Combining my crafty skills and Lee’s vision, we’ve found that we make the perfect home decorating team.

When we first bought our house in 2018, we decided to try something different in the living room; big, bold, turquoise diamonds – what’s the worst that could happen, right? If it looked rubbish, we’d just paint over it.

It actually went surprisingly well (as you can probably guess) and so each room since has become a little more daring, and a little more ambitious.

Say hello to our hallway:

The aim was to use up some of the older colours we had lying around (paint is damn expensive!) And what initially started off as a simple idea (paint the wall dark blue), eventually developed into something more wonderful and stunning.

Here’s how we did it.

What you need:

• Paint pads (we prefer them to rollers)
• Paint tray
• Paint burshes (varying widths)
• Frog tape
• Dulux Lost Lake (the dark blue)
• Dulux White
• GoodHome Beverly Hills Metallic Effect
• Pencil
• Paper
• Ruler/tape measure

Step 1: Prep time

The first thing we did was freshen the wall up with a coat of white paint. There were a bunch of old marks and discolourations on the wall that we didn’t want showing through so we gave it two coats of white while we worked on planning how it would look.

Step 2: Mapping out what we wanted

I actually used Canva to help with this because it was just so much quicker and easier than having to draw it out by hand. We also tinkered with the colour layout; did we go for something random, or something more patterned?

Here’s what our ‘map’ looked like:

*totally didn’t finish the colour sequence…but you get the idea

Step 3: Taping the wall

Now that we knew what we were doing, it was just a case of taping the wall. This is always the hardest part because it needs to be as exact as possible, especially when you’re working with geometric shapes.

I did the horizontal lines first to provide a framework. Unfortunately, doing these walls often feels like a mathematical equation. We had to measure the height of the wall and then divide it by a certain number of rows (while allowing for the tape in between) in order to get the height.

Once we had the rows in place, it was then a case of determining the height/width of the triangles. This was a bit of math plus some guesstimating. In the end, I made a template from paper of the exact dimensions to help me mark the wall (mainly so I could get the angles right).

It was then just a case of measuring, marking and taping each side of the triangle along each row (which took me hours!)

Step 4: Prepping for paint

As we’d decided to go with a pattern, it was really important I painted the right triangles. When you’re just using two colours, it’s pretty straight forward – you paint every other shape. But I had three colours to deal with here!

So I wrote B in pencil for the blue triangles and marked the ones that would be staying white with a little bit of tape.

Step 5: Time to paint!

Time for the best part.

Top tip: before you start painting, make sure you rub down each bit of tape to ensure it’s properly sealed against the wall otherwise you’ll end up with little leaks.

It was then a case of painting in each colour. I started with the blue, did a couple of coats before moving on to the silver.

We found the metallic paint we had left obvious brush strokes on the wall, which looked messy if they weren’t all going in the same direction. So the silver triangles took about three coats as well as painstakingly making sure all the strokes were neat, even and going in the same direction for aesthetics.

I’m assuming not all metallic paint acts this way, so it could be down to the brand we’d bought.

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Step 6: Revealing the end result

Okay, I lied. This is definitely the best part.

Now, you need to take the tape off when the paint is still wet. Sounds counterinitiative, I know. However, if you wait for the wall to completely dry, there’s a higher risk of ripping off chunks of paint.

I normally leave it for about half an hour to an hour and then remove the tape and it is hands down the most satisfying feeling on the planet. Suddenly, all these clean lines start appearing and they look amazing!

Sure, you’ll notice all the mistakes; like where the paint has bled because the tape hasn’t quite sealed as well. But that’s fixable.

Step 7: Touching up

There’s always going to be touch ups. A day or so later, once the wall is 100% dry, I go back with a tiny little brush and touch up any bits that need it.

And by then we have one rocking feature wall.

Here’s the full makeover video:

The hallway is definitely my favourite wall so far, although I love all of the ones we’ve done for different reasons.

What do you think? Have you tried experimenting with painting tape? Would you want to see our other painting projects?