How to Install Beadboard

Hello, my friend, hello again; today we come together to talk about How to Install Beadboard and hope the blog can help you.

Once relegated to the mudroom, beadboard is now featured in homes’ main living areas. Dress up your traditional or farmhouse-style space by DIY-ing your own beadboard walls.

Beadboard is a type of wood paneling that has raised half-round vertical beads milled between flat lengths of board. Beadboard adds visual interest and a cozy feeling to a space, and it’s particularly well suited to a traditional or modern farmhouse-style home.

A common decorative finish in the 1890s, beadboard continued to be popular as wainscoting and for porch ceilings until it fell out of fashion in the 1950s. Today, beadboard is enjoying renewed interest as homeowners seek to incorporate more interesting surfaces and traditional elements into their homes.

It’s fairly easy to learn how to install beadboard paneling, but planning is important and details matter, particularly in spots where the beadboard meets the baseboard and other trim in the room. This guide to installing beadboard will help handy homeowners pull off a professional-quality DIY project.

Beadboard vs. Wainscoting: What’s the Difference?

Although the terms are often used interchangeably, beadboard and wainscoting aren’t the same. Wainscoting describes any decorative surface treatment applied to the lower portion of an interior wall, while beadboard is a particular kind of wainscoting.

Beadboard was so popular as a wall treatment during the late 1800s to mid-1900s that it became a general term to describe any wainscoting. Today, beadboard is used for ceilings, walls, and cabinetry inlays too.

Beadboard is only one style of paneling that’s commonly used as wainscoting. Other wainscoting options include raised or flat panel, board and batten, shiplap, and overlay (a combination of flat and raised panels).