How to Install Wood Slats on a Wall

Installing wood slats on a wall lends a refined air to a room. It's a mid-century modern look often found at high-end hotels or designer homes. It's not a feature you ordinarily see in homes—which makes it even more noteworthy. A wood slat wall is the ideal focal point for a room: an accent wall that you'll have for years to come.

Installing wood slats on a wall can be a bit time-consuming, but it isn't complicated at all. Plus, you have a couple of time-saving options. One method, using dimensional lumber slats, is easier and faster but it's much more expensive. The other method, using sheet goods, is slower and requires a table saw, but costs are considerably pared down.

This guide will yield enough wood slats to cover 8 feet of a wall. To cover more wall space, plan to add more wood and supplies as needed to cover the space you're working with.

Basics of Installing Wood Slats on a Wall

A wood slat wall is made of evenly spaced vertical strips of wood that extend from the floor to the ceiling. Each wood slat is from 1/2-inch to 2 inches wide. The width of the wood slats is your choice, depending on the final look you're hoping to achieve. Generally, wood slats tend to be more on the narrow side.

The wood slats should be spaced about 1/4-inch to 1/2-inch apart from each other. To avoid a zebra-stripe effect, spaces between the slats should be less than the width of the slats.

The color of the wall behind the slats plays an important role because this is the background for the slats. You may want to choose a dark background, such as matte-black, for a dramatic, modern look.

Building With Dimensional Lumber

Using pre-cut, one-by-two wood strips accelerates the project and helps you avoid using a table saw. Most of the work is concentrated on cutting the ends of the boards and nailing up the boards.

Each one-by-two is actually 1-1/2 inches wide. To cover an 8-foot stretch of wall with a 3/4-inch space between boards would require 48 strips. A timesaver that ensures a cleaner look is using a spare slat held on edge as a spacer for the next slat. Or, if you want a different width, use blocks cut to your preferred spacing size to keep spacing uniform across the wall.

While softwood strips are inexpensive, the slat wall can still be expensive when you need to buy 100 or 200 strips. Hardwood strips are three times more expensive than softwood but require less finishing work.

Building With Sheet Goods

Cutting a 4-foot by 8-foot sheet of plywood into strips is a more cost-effective approach, but it is more time-intensive. One sheet of plywood yields around 90 to 92 strips, each 1/2 inch wide.

One chief difference between using sheet goods and dimensional lumber is thickness. If you'd like slats that hug the wall closely, you'll want to use nominal 1/2-inch plywood (about 3/8 inch thick). With dimensional one-by-two lumber, the strips would be 3/4 inch thick.

Safety Considerations

Working with a table saw or circular saw is hazardous enough but even more so with repetitive cutting. Stay alert at all times. Keep your hands away from the blade by pushing from a distance or by using a push block or push stick. Large sheets can be difficult to push through a table saw, so do the cutting with an assistant to help hold the other end.