Following on from our last Nursery Styling blog post, we are going to look into the board and batten style feature wall. Sounds great, doesn’t it?

Below are just a few customer examples of how this has been achieved in their nursery:

So how do you do it?

Creating a board and batten wall is actually easier than you think, there are a lot of helpful tutorials out there to guide you, but we thought we would put together a guide to help you.

It is one of those current trends that can add impact and flair to your nursery and once complete, makes for a very regal finish – especially if you have those large Georgian sash windows as shown in the example from @riverside_home.Here are some of the items we used to style the Maya Mini 3-piece Room Set studio photography.

Llama Wall Decor

Faux Fur Star Cushion

Maya Mini 3 piece room set

Dulux Paint

What do you need? 

To achieve this effect, you will only need these items:

1. MDF board in your chosen size, (this is entirely up to you in regard to how thick you would like the panels to be)


2. A pack of long tack/panel nails (you’ll only need these temporarily to hold the panels in place until the adhesive has done its work and set)


3. A couple of tubes of grab adhesive


4. Primer


5. Saw to cut your panel strips (your local wood yard can cut your mdf strips to your desired size)


6. Wall paint in your chosen shade, some paints such as Valspar contain primer within them, lessening the need to buy primer as extra


7. A hammer


8. Tape Measure


9. Pencil


10. Spirit level/laser level

Step 1 – Start with the horizontal strips

Measure the length of your wall from top to bottom, you will lay the horizontal strips first, if you are opting to have your panelled wall end at dado level you would ideally want three battens, one at floor level, one at dado level, and one in between; spacing them out between 400mm – 500mm.

Top Tip – if you have skirting boards, fit your lower batten to just above your skirting, if not, ensure that you leave a 50mm gap from the floor to allow for air circulation.

Decide on how high you would like your panelling to be and cut each of your vertical panels to match the height, you will use a tongue-and-groove method to intersect your vertical and horizontal panels.

Step 2 – Mark out the height of your panelled wall

Now that you have determined the height you would like, use one of your vertical panels to mark the height using a pencil. Then, using a tape measure, mark out the other levels, keeping to the 400 – 500mm spacing.

Once the height has been marked out, you will need to use a spirit level or laser level to draw out the markers for your horizontal battens.

Below is a plan (used for illustration purposes only!)

Step 3 – Border the edges

Board and Batten walls always look better with a bordered edge, most properties do not have straight walls, your very lucky if you do If this is the case then most MDF boards can be scribbed to the wall, and should the gap be much larger, a great way to fill in the gaps, is to use decorators’ caulk.

Step 4 – Fix your battens in place

Start by fixing your horizontal battens in place, place some grab adhesive onto the back of your battens, and attach low tack nails temporarily in place, you will be able to remove these later.

Following your initial sketch or plan, measure and cut your vertical panels, using the same method above fix your battens in place.

Step 4 – Get Creative

Now that the battens are firmly in place, and the adhesive has worked its magic, you can remove the low tack nails, and start thinking about what colour you are going to paint your feature wall, if you’re like me, then you will have already been on Pinterest or in Homebase and/or B&Q to peruse the colours on offer.