Painting tile + the best stencils around

Many moons ago I was mindlessly scrolling through Instagram, as one does, and stopped dead in my tracks when I saw Grace (@camp_patton) was painting her tile floors. Yes. PAINTING THEM.

I didn’t even know that was a thing, or that it was even possible. But I immediately thought of my kids’ bathroom and how it was crying out for help. Check out this before photo below to see what I mean.

For some reason, every room in our house was a different shade of green when we moved in. I know. I don’t get it either. So, slowly but surely, I’d been eliminating the green room by room and the bathroom walls, a particularly cringey shade, were next on my list anyways. It was the perfect time to just go for it and paint the floors too.

So, fairly confident that there was nowhere to go but up, I taped off my baseboards and gave it a shot. It took about a week of nap times and occasionally letting my older kids binge watch Curious George to get everything done. And now, one year later, I have to say they’ve held up incredibly well. There are a few chips here and there (mostly from the way my kids use the step stools like bumper cars to vie for prime tooth-brushing real estate).

But, chips and all, I would do it all again in a heartbeat. The transformation speaks for itself, and although it’s not perfect, it’s infinitely better than it was before, and it makes me happy to know I could beautify a space in my house with my own two hands for the cost of a stencil and a couple gallons of paint.

I used Good Jeans from Clare Paint on the walls and for the stenciling, a basic stain stealer for the white bottom layer, and a clear polyurethane to seal everything off. Next week I’ll walk through how I stenciled the floors, what tools I used, and what I’d do differently next time. In the meantime, here are my favorite stencils for tile flooring all from Cutting Edge Stencils.

The beauty of stenciling is you can choose exactly what colors you want the “tile” to be, down to the background and accent colors. Trust me, if I can do it, you can too!