How to Make Faux Wallpaper with Sharpie

HOT DAMN, it’s been a minute since I shared an update about my home office redesign. Well, don’t you worry your pretty little head. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been working on it!

I’ve finally painted this room and created a killer DIY Sharpie wall that I can’t wait to share with you (including a tutorial)!

But first, a quick refresher:

There was a lot to do to get this room prepped. If you recall, I started with this beauty of a space.

In my kick-off post, I shared the beginning stages of my redesign and my design inspiration to ultimately round out the room. When all was said and done, I had purchased a desk and chair and shopped around my own house to find a few items to make this room at least a little more tolerable, especially since it’s become my office since COVID started.

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Of course, that wasn’t my final design plan though! Over the last several months(!!!), as we’ve been working on the dining room renovation (HERE and HERE), the flip (HERE, HERE, and HERE), and the master suite remodel (HERE), I’ve been stealing any free time I can find to work on this room - and it’s finally coming together!

Well, I’ve done it! And of course, I’ll show you how I made it happen with a DIY Sharpie wall tutorial. Let’s go!

Step 1: Create a Template

I jumped into this project with a vision, but there were a few things I needed to do before I could get to the fun part. First things first, I needed to figure out the scale of my design. To do this, I simply drew one of the diamonds for the design in approximately the size I was imagining on a piece of paper and taped it up on the wall.

I’m glad I took this simple step, too, because the first diamond was larger than I wanted.

Once I figured out the sizing, I created a mocked-up design on some paper and taped that up as well. This helped me feel more confident to move forward.

Step 2 - Draw your Vertical Lines

Next, I worked on penciling my pattern onto the wall. I started by marking every 4 inches along the bottom of the wall by the baseboard.

I actually started in the middle of the room so I didn’t end up with a full diamond on one side of the wall and a partial diamond on the other. Now, both sides have partial diamonds and I think it flows nicely.

The mocked-up design was created out of 6x6 squares, but that doesn’t translate to 6 inches from corner to corner - it’s more like 8.5. To make it easier on myself, I didn’t fret over the diamonds being that EXACT dimension as long as they were close. I ended up making my diamonds 8x8 from corner to corner.

The image below hopefully helps show that the diamonds themselves are 8 inches, but because they all have a vertical line running through them as part of the design, I marked along the baseboard every 4 inches.

Pro tip: As you’re drawing your vertical lines, measure along the way every once in a while to make sure they’re still 4 inches from one another. I didn’t do this and had to fix quite a bit because of it (I think my level may have shifted a couple of times). I’ll show you what I mean a little further down.

Step 3 - Draw your Diagonal Lines

Once I drew my vertical lines, it was time to pencil in my diagonal lines. For this step, I measured up 4 inches from the bottom of every other vertical line and made a tick mark. Then, I went back and measured up 8 inches from the bottom of the remaining vertical lines and made a tick mark.

Once you’ve marked your vertical lines along the bottom accordingly, you can make a tick mark every 8 inches on each line until you hit the top of the line where it meets the ceiling.

When you’ve finished making all your tick marks, lightly (again, emphasis on the lightly part) connect your tick marks diagonally.

Step 4: Fix Your Mistakes

You will inevitably have measured a little off here and there. NOW IS YOUR CHANCE TO FIX THAT.

Remember how I said to check that your vertical lines were 4 inches apart all the way up the wall? Well, this is why I specifically called that out.

It’s super important to make sure that your vertical lines intersect with the points of your diamonds. Otherwise, when you add your remaining lines to each diamond, they’re going to look weird if the vertical line isn’t centered (or mostly centered. We’re not robots, after all).

So before you go gung-ho and bust out your paint pen, correct your lines or you’ll have to paint over a bunch of them like I did.

Yeah, there were quite a few that didn’t line up as well as I wanted them to. It was a huge time suck that could have been avoided if I had corrected them before I traced over my pencil lines with Sharpie. Learn from my mistakes!

Once your lines are nice and centered, you can trace over them with your Sharpie Paint Pen. I recommend starting with your diagonal lines, as you can cheat the vertical lines here and there a little if needed. This design is so busy, it’s hard to tell if they don’t line up perfectly.

Step 5 - Add Lines to Each Diamond

This is where it starts to get more exciting (yet, also more time-consuming) because you can really see your design start to come together. To save my arms from falling off, I did this part in sections over several days.

Starting at the bottom tip of each diamond, make a tick mark at 2 inches and 4 inches along the bottom two sides.

Then, draw a line connecting the top point of your diamond to each of your tick marks.

Soon, you’ll see it start to come together. This is where I got a little excited and just HAD to see what a few of them looked like grouped together.

Step 6 - Finish the Edges

No matter how you plan out your design, you’re going to have pieces of the pattern that are incomplete where the design meets an adjacent wall. These sections are a little tricky to finish. Here’s what I did.

The bottom row: Because of how I started my design along the baseboard, there are half diamonds that needed to be finished. But since the bottom half of the diamond was missing, I had to figure out how to work around that.

To do so, I simply took a piece of paper, held it up in the middle (horizontally) of one of the completed diamonds, and marked where the lines were. I then used that to mark where those lines would be in the middle of each half diamond.

Then, I drew a line from the top of the diamond to each tick mark.

The top row: I followed similar steps on the top row. I took that same piece of paper and held it up in the middle of each diamond to identify where the line would intersect.

Then, I drew a line from the tick marks on the bottom edges of each diamond (remember how we made marks 2 inches apart in an earlier step?) to the tick marks I made in the middle of the diamond.

The sides: Along the sides of the wall where I only had a small section of a diamond to work with definitely took a little noodling to figure out. Since I didn’t have the rest of the diamond to use to make my tick marks or lines, I had to come up with another solution.

I ended up tracing one of my diamonds and cutting out a new template that I could wrap around the side of the wall. I made tick marks at the tip of the diamond and where any lines within the diamond would touch the bottom edge using the lines on the template as a guide.

Next, I used a piece of paper to wrap around the corner and connect my dots in pencil.

Then, I was able to use my ruler to trace my pencil line in Sharpie to the edge of the wall.

Step 7 - Touch-ups

There will most certainly be areas that you goofed up here and there (you can even catch some of my goof-ups in the pictures above!). Now that your design is complete, take a craft brush and touch up any lines that are a little wonky or any stray marks.

Bonus Step - Stand Back and Enjoy

Man, you just spent a lot of time creating an accent wall - relish in it because it looks AWESOME! I know I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of time admiring my handiwork. You should too!

Now, let’s be real. Would it have been easier to just use wallpaper? Probably! I found lots of similar wallpaper designs, but on many of them the design was way bigger than I wanted or the colors weren’t right. And don’t get me started on the cost! By DIYing my own design, I was able to completely customize it FOR CHEAP! Plus, I love a challenge and it feels good to know I created this wall with my own two hands.

This space has undergone such a huge transformation. It’s hard to believe it was once red and blue. Now it’s so much brighter and more inviting. I definitely don’t mind working in this office anymore and actually prefer to work in here now! Especially since I get to share my space with my sweet little plant babies all day long while I work.

I definitely don’t consider this room “complete” yet. Heck - I still have the whole other side of the room to furnish! But that’s a post for another day…

Related Home Office Design Posts:

• Designing a Home Office

• How to Choose the Perfect Size Lamp (Every Time!)

How to Create a Sharpie Accent Wall