1 Day DIY Striped Walls

We were pretty much done with the Ban.do project a few months ago, but as I stared at the scouting shots I thought couldn’t there be just a bit more crazy up in there? We really didn’t have a budget to spend a ton on wallpaper or some sort of custom mural so whatever we added to it for the shoot had to be fast and cheap – which are words I only like to use to describe the food I’ve been shoveling into my pregnant body at 9pm.

I liked the white walls, I did, but there lacked some sort of final cohesion between the brand and the space. Jen was fairly adamant about not having the space look like the product, but instead an inspiration for it. I understood but as a designer I felt like there wasn’t quite that BANG that I wanted.

Let’s recap where we started in the main space after they moved in:

I believe that was pre-pink hair for both Kelly and Christina. Look at their sad little desks.

After we did the first round of installation and scouting shots it looked like this:

I liked it for sure, but it didn’t feel as cohesive and intentional as I wanted. It felt like someone had found a bunch of awesome stuff and styled it in a room together, but if that pinata and sandwich board were removed It might have looked empty and really young – so my job wasn’t really done. A creative studio that represents a really strong brand needed to have something there that united everything.

It was a job for some pink diagonal stripes.

Finding an inspiration photo for the fairly simple pattern was strangely difficult. I googled ‘diagonal stripe’, ‘perpendicular stripe’, ‘prism stripes’, ‘candy stripe’ and NOTHING came up, despite the fact that this pattern is on trend.

Finally I found this nail art that represented what we wanted, but right before that I had drawn that pattern on the right with a sharpie on one of Charlie’s drawing pads – which was too complicated and rather ugly. So I gave both those options to Ginny and she came up with a couple different renders.

Option #2 was what she thought I meant when I verbalized the pattern and option #1 was what she did after I showed her the nail art. Goes to show you how different the interpretation of a visual are when you speak about it verbally. Pictures are worth a 1000 words.

So we had our dude tape it up:

He us 3″ tape in this room and 5″ tape in the other room. Is that pattern hard to tape up? I don’t think so, it just takes someone who cares enough to obsess about the lines being (and staying) straight. It’s not perfect, but honestly you can’t tell.

That amazing color blocked sequin thing was done by Natalie Shriver for their catalogue shoot. It was just being stored in the kitchen, so we freed it and gave it a space of importance in the front room. It’s pretty dope because it brings all of our colors together and added that hit of cobalt blue that was in the inspiration but never fully made it in the design plan.

Meanwhile on the other side of the room we did a very similar thing just with a larger scale (almost 5″) tape.

We loved the RAD but it slowly fell apart (I guess thats what you get for $15 at the flea market). My only regret is painting the side walls and ceiling pink – it made the whole room feel pink which was not totally the intention, so those are now painted back to white. I haven’t seen it yet in person but I’m assuming that it feels a lot more fresh and clean. These lovely ladies have to design in this space so its best to have some visual stimulation without it being overwhelming.

And that’s how we put diagonal pink candy stripes on the wall in one day.

(*Oh and quick tip – where the stripes meet you do have to pull off the tape and bridge that gap – you’ll see what I mean. At least thats what Collin did – I just didn’t want it to drive you nuts if you couldn’t figure out how to do it in one quick coat.)

*The first round of ‘after photos’ and all the progress/installation photos by Kelsey Tucker. Refinery 29 ‘after’ photosby Tessa Neustadt. Check out the whole Refinery29 tour here. Want more info on the whole process? Check out these posts:The Beginning | Floor Plan & Progress | Ban.do Update | The Ban.do Studio Design Reveal – The Front Room | The Ban.do Studio Design Reveal – Jens Office