Modern Farmhouse Kids Room - Board and Batten Wainscoting

In this post, I am discussing another great Board and Batten project for you all. In my prior post I talked about a Board and Batten basement, but this style can be used in any room of your home to give it a more modern farmhouse/cottage feel.

I love experimenting with different Board and Batten styles. One way to change the look is to place it at different heights on your wall, the different heights give the room a different feel. Another way to change the look is to design the Batten Boards differently on your wall. In my prior post, we installed a square over rectangular style of Board and Batten. When I was designing my daughters room, I chose a rectangular style. We didn’t add the extra square boxes on top.

When deciding on the style of Board and Batten you choose for your project, you want to keep in mind the height of the ceilings. This bedroom has 8′ ceilings, I took the Batten Boards up to 6′, leaving 2′ of space on top to paint. In our basement project, with 9′ walls, we had 3′ left on top. The different heights and the different style created a very different look and feel for this bedroom.

One aspect I love about the Board and Batten style, is that you don’t need any extra panels to attach to the wall. The Batten boards are attached directly to the drywall (preferably into studs), which makes this project more economical than other wainscoting projects, where you need those extra materials. When choosing paint for the Boards, I choose a classic white semi-gloss which is used to paint the Boards and the drywall.

At the time, my daughter was in her purple phase….(which didn’t last very long). She loved the Batten styling and never grew tired of it. We painted the top portion of the room a dark violet, and the ceiling a lighter violet. In keeping with the craftsman style for the room, I changed the moldings around the windows and doors, to the shaker style.