Teach yourself stencilling to transform your home

Used to decorate since the eighth century, stencilling is not just for cottage-core fans throwing climbing roses around the cornice - there is an infinite library of laser-cut Mylar stencils in tiles, bricks, wood prints and Banksy icons. Let go of any chintzy preconceptions. 

One of my favourite dedicated quality brands is Cutting Edge Stencils. Featured in every interior magazine that matters, and made in New York since 2008, they are available on Etsy from around €10 a sheet. Cheaper sheets start at just €4 including custom stencils, suited to floors, walls and furniture upcycles in Chinese ginkgo flowers to vintage sailing boats.

We’re just using paint and a little surface prep. Muck up stencilling in latex, acrylic or leftover emulsion, and so long as you have a jam-jar of the original wall or surface colour, you can let the disaster dry and erase any mistakes with a light sanding and a fresh coat or touch-up of the base colour. Honestly, most of the “mistakes” or “imperfections” you perceive with your nose pressed up against the work will be undetectable when you stand back and take it all in.

The chief demands of stencilling are accuracy in lining up and levelling the stencil sheets for a repeating design, and patience. Going large can be tiring on the shoulders — don’t try to get a few walls finished in a single day. 

Once you gain a little confidence you can mix up stencils in prescribed collections, add free-hand painted or drawn details, delve into metallics, and try your hand at more sophisticated, highly ornate projects. It’s dangerously addictive. Still, there are a few basics you must get right before launching that Moroccan fantasy or forest glade in your master.

Preparation

The base colour and condition of the wall need to be carefully prepared before we start. Boring but vital. Ensure you have smooth clean walls, and that the supporting colour will suit your vision. The flatter the paint finish the better as it will “catch” the stencil paint and prevent it from running or seeping around the edges.

Fill any cracks, prime fresh plaster, and give the wall at least two coats of that anchor shade to enrich the pigment. Timber furniture will generally need a sand and an appropriate base coat. Let wall paint cure for at least 24 hours, and put away any excess to touch up wobbles in your stencil work (inevitable even for pros’). 

Materials

In terms of stencil paint — you can buy dedicated crafter paint, or pick up inexpensive tubes of acrylic (try your Euro store) and a plastic mixing palette to dispense the paint as you work. Always look for water-based products for easy clean-up and low VOC load.

Now we just need a small high-density foam roller and/or stencil brushes. 

Proper stencilling brushes are dense and blunt-cut and are designed to be used with a dry-brush technique that can be safely taken right over the edges of the stencil cut-outs. 

Foam rollers are fantastic for larger areas where you are using just one colour at a time. It’s useful to have 2-3 sizes of brush for smaller and larger cut-outs. The pressure and direction you use can alter the intensity of the colour, fabulous if you are using just one shade but want to indicate light, shade and texture.

Practise

The more recent trend in stencil printing for walls, ceilings and furniture is white or metallic on a dramatic dark. Mock something up before you start. Break up a couple of cardboard boxes for canvases and use all the colours from the base colours to all the shades you are considering. Try out slight varieties on your first idea. 

The joy of stencil work is that you can determine the colour-way for your project very specifically taking the lead from other favourite colours or fabrics scattered around the room. It's bespoke in that way. Take to the walls only after this planning and practise on your dummy sheets. 

Park the dry brush in a pea-sized amount of paint, move it around to even coat the bristles, and then tap the excess down on some kitchen paper. You don’t need much. Painting a wall, work from the ceiling down, making your way in horizontal sets of prints. Travel left to right if you are right-handed and right to left if left-handed.

Bleeding

Crisp clean edges are crucial to a good finish, so we need to prevent any bleeding of the paint onto the ground colour or worse still, into different areas of the stencil design. Bleeding happens primarily due to two issues.

The first is that the stencil moves while you are working (and with an intricate, fine cut-out, a split millimetre will show). A book of stencils for a complete design will include some form of registration marks to line up the stencil set as you work across a larger area or turn the design.

There are two ways to fix your stencil in place. Painter’s tape has a very low tack, and should not lift any paint when you take it off. Don’t use cheap masking tape — pay the extra. You can also use a low-tack spray adhesive. 

Just drift the spray over the back of the stencil very sparingly, give it a minute or two to get slightly dry, and then press it into place before adding the painter’s tape to the corners. Use your painter’s tape to mask off areas you want to avoid getting splotched with your stencil colour.

The second issue is that you have overloaded your dabber, brush or roller with paint. Stencilling is done with an almost dry tool in a brisk, accurate pouncing action straight down on the wall. Practise on an old sample of wallpaper to get the pressure and application right. 

Don’t press a roller. Use a light hand. You will be working off a smudge of paint, not a wet blob in your palette. This way you can create a more atmospheric, broken, distressed finish. Working on the stencil, you can go over a single petal or chosen areas several times to darken or even shade one colour without slathering on one dull coat. 

Painting with just small, thin applications in water-based paint also means a very quick dry time — important when you may be going back to an area to add more detail or an accent with another stencil altogether. Loose, ditsy abstract designs are far easier than large-scale geometric patterns that can take a disturbing drunken list if you are not meticulously level.

Obviously, any stencil should be put up in the right position from the start and should be completely flat and clean. If the edges of the cutouts get loaded in paint, which then dries, it will blur the edges of your ongoing work. Washing stencil sheets be careful not to pull them around too much or they can tear. I find working on the bottom of the bath with a little warm water and a soft sponge the handiest place to clean mine, and it’s an easy area to limit any mess. Off you go, then!