I’ve been meaning to write today’s post for a while, but finally got around to taking the photos for it this weekend! It was harder than I expected because of the lighting situation in my apartment—there isn’t a ton of natural light in my living room since my unit is tucked into a corner, but with some creative angles, I think I was able to snap y’all some photos that do this wall justice.

When I moved in, I knew immediately I wanted to make this large wall an accent wall of some sort. It’s huge—too big for a realistic gallery wall—and doesn’t have a window, so I initially looked into painting it. My building will paint an accent wall for you for free, the only problem is they only offer four colors—a dark gray, a mustard yellow, an aqua blue, and a burnt orange. None of them were really “me” so I started looking into other options.

I have a few friends that installed temporary wallpaper in their apartments and loved how those walls turned out, so I began looking around for patterns that I liked and wouldn’t be too overwhelming on a wall of this size. Once I found this Simple Shapes watercolor stripes pattern on Wayfair, I knew it was the pattern for me. At the time, it was sold out on Wayfair, so I purchased it directly from the Simple Shapes website. (PSA—if you purchase through their website before 12/5, you can take advantage of their 25% off sale!) On the product description, they have an easy-to-use wallpaper calculator that helps you determine how many rolls to buy. For the size of my wall, the calculator told me to buy seven of the 24 x 108″ sheets—to be safe, I purchased eight, but did not need the last roll and had extra from the seventh roll, so if I had to do it again, I’d go with the calculator’s recommendations.

While temporary wallpaper can be self-installed, because stripes are an unforgiving pattern and this wall was so large, I hired a professional to put this up for me. I found him on Thumbtack and was super happy with his work—if you’re in the DC area and would like his contact information, feel free to reach out! He only charged me $150 and finished in under two hours, which was far less time than it would have taken me, so I’m really glad I outsourced this one. Other than lightly sanding my wall—so much so none of the paint even came off—there was no prep involved.

Needless to say, I’m so happy with the result! To finish things off, I added this simple round mirror and love how it helps reflect the natural light from the window across the room and break up the stripes some.

I can’t speak to the removal process yet—but the guy who installed my wallpaper told me to pull it off like a command strip and it shouldn’t harm the drywall. Fingers crossed! Whenever I move—which hopefully isn’t anytime soon, I’ll update this post with a recap of the removal process.