To Shiplap Or Not To Shiplap? Classic Wainscoting Instead

First off, let me say that I LOVE shiplap.

It’s one of my all time favorite wall treatments. I love the rustic, organic feel that authentic shiplap gives to a space.

Especially if you live in an actual farmhouse. In Texas. Or Louisiana.

I seriously considered installing shiplap on the wall in our guest bedroom. But this is a single-story ranch in Southern California. Could I really pull that off? Or would it just look like I was faking it? Plus our ceilings are barely 8 feet high and I know the horizontal lines would just create the illusion that they’re even lower.

So… what to do….

For several decades, this room was used as a home office. One wall was covered in cork squares. Painted the same blue-gray color as the rest of the room.

When we took all the cork down, there were big brown globs and swirls of glue all over the wall.

This is the wall where the bed is going so I wanted it to be a feature wall.

But truth be told, I’m a little hesitant about using shiplap because it’s so trendy right now. Is it going to make my house look dated in a year or two?

In our last house (in Northern Calif) we did a wainscot of 6-inch wide v-groove boards installed vertically, 5 feet high behind the bed in our master bedroom.

And we installed it around the tub in the master bath.

It’s actually a form of shiplap! But we did this in 2003 - way before shiplap was a household word.

Go figure…..

For our current house we went back and forth about what to do on the wall behind the guest bed. Eventually we decided on a classic, timeless wainscot treatment.

And I love it!

This is the look we went with. It’s really easy to install. It’s 5 feet high. Which is a good proportion because the wall is 8 feet high. (You don’t want to cut a wall in half with wainscoting. Always go higher or lower than half of the wall height.)