Review: Yoruba African Stencil by Royal Design Studio

Disclosure: Royal Design Studio provided a stencil and brush for review. All opinion and images are my own.

I love modern wallpaper designs, but after the pain of removing it in my dad’s powder room, I don’t think I’d ever be able to commit to it. And why should I have to, when beautiful stencils from Royal Design Studio exist?

Earlier this month, I decided to buckle down with our neglected bedroom. So far, we got a new duvet cover and ditched the TV, but there’s plenty more to come.

After a couple weekends of work (slowed down by being siiiicckk), this is what we’ve got now!!

It’s tough to see in images that are farther away, but the entire wall behind our bed is stenciled now, and it looks fly. Yes, fly. I said it and I’m sticking with it. The pattern is the Yoruba African Stencil.

The Yoruba Stencil is quite intricate, so I didn’t want to go too wild with the color. I thought a 50% darker formula of the existing color (Babbling Brook by Olympic) would give enough contrast, but I ended up going back to Lowe’s for a sample 100% stronger.

Stenciling was actually really easy and forgiving! Honestly, I’ve wanted to stencil a wall for a long time, but I was so intimidated – would it be hard? Would I totally screw it up? Nope! I tried two painting methods: a high density foam roller and the 1 1/2″ Stencil Brush.

The winner? The brush, hands down. Here’s the thing: sure, you can go faster with the roller, but it uses more paint, it’s hard to get consistent, sometimes it slips on the slick stencil and it was tough to see if I’d hit all the cutouts. The roller is probably great for a big, geometric stencil, but for the Yoruba or anything similarly detailed? Brush it all the way. The dense, compact bristles make a little bit of paint go a long way (I used about 2/3 of a sample).

I started at the bottom and worked my way up from left to right.

I taped the stencil to the wall on three sides to keep it taut. I pulled the tape gently to move the stencil and didn’t have any issues with paint chipping or peeling.

Things got a little dicey where the wall meets the ceiling, with those weird angles. But the stencil was really sturdy, so it held up to a bit of manhandling.

Can we talk about how cool this stencil is? There are lizards! And an abstracty wood grain! It works perfectly with our new duvet cover. And, instead of wallpaper that can cost big money, this is only $49 and you can reuse it over and over.

I stopped before going all the way to the top because I had other plans…

Trim! But more on that tomorrow.

Ryan really likes the stencil too. Even though I only did one wall as a focal point, we’re considering doing the whole room! This wall took about four hours. Stenciling is a great project to do in pieces here and there – painting half one day and another half the next day won’t affect the results.

Again, it’s super subtle from afar on camera, but it’s such a fun design on the wall.

Now we just need to get a headboard in here! I ordered lamps and bought some frames. Don’t you love when things start coming together in a room?!

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