DIY Slat Wall

You Can Build a Slat Wall in One Weekend or Less!

Hi there! My name is Kenzie and I work here at Lux Renovations. I made this slat wall with my husband, Isaiah. With a couple tools, nails, and some spackle, you can too!

We were mid renovation on our basement, and doing all the work ourselves with the help of my brother. All our plans for the basement were neutral, clean looking, and focusing on making the room cozy for movie nights, but bright for entertaining. I kept saying these words "I do not want it to feel like a dungeon", because low key, it kind of felt like that before. There was a room with a cardboard ceiling. It was bad. 

We got a sheet of plywood, a can of paint, nails, a nail gun, some liquid nails adhesive, spackle, our table saw, a miter saw, and then set to work. Isaiah did some very particular math to figure out how many slats to rip the plywood into, and then he and my brother cut it up with the table saw. We measured so that we had a couple of extras too, in case something broke, or we thought one looked better than the others. We also made sure to have one extra slat that we used to measure the space between slats. Next, we painted each of the sticks before we put them on the wall. A note here, you do not have to paint your slats! They look so good just plain wood on the wall, but with our TV on this wall we wanted them painted so the wall wasn't as distracting while watching something. If you do want to paint them, painting them entirely before putting them on the wall was so convenient and I would highly suggest it. At this point our slats were too tall for our ceiling. We marked where we needed to trim each slat, trimmed, put a little line of liquid nails on the back side, stuck it on the wall next to our measurement slat, and then shot a few nails in for good measure. As for the measurement slat, you butt this one up on the most recent slat you placed, not using adhesive or nails to secure it. You then place a new slat right against the measurement slat with the adhesive side facing the wall. You shoot a few nails into the slat you are placing on the wall. You then pull the measurement slat out once you have the slat you are placing secured, and repeat. This is an easy way to make sure you to get the same spacing in between each slat! After getting all the segments on the wall, we spackled over each hole, and then painted the fronts of all the slats. Ta-da!

I cannot tell you how many people have walked into our basement for the first time and said, "Oh wow!" or something of that nature. It has been pretty much everyone we have had over. This is an easy way to add dimension and texture subtly to your space, without art or some other medium. Isaiah and I have hopes to build a home someday in our future and we have already talked about how we want to incorporate another slat wall to that home someday. I hope you give this project a try, or call us up and we could help you add this feature to your space!