Want to try a fun, colorful, and non-permanent way to decorate your home or rental space? Use washi tape!
Lately, one of the decoration trends that has been popping up everywhere is the use of washi tape, that fun-colored tape that you can basically use for decorating anything. It's a great non-permanent way to change the look of your belongings (or even the look of your home) without spending a lot of money or time. It’s especially good for those who are using a rental space or are going to move soon, because washi tape is just as easy to remove as it is to apply.
Washi tape can be used for decorating almost anything you want, whether it's an entire wall of the living room or simply to differentiate the keys on your keychain.
Go Big
Do you have a room or wall in your home that’s just a bit too bland? Or perhaps you’ve simply gotten bored with your current decor and feel like it needs a change. If you don’t want to go through the hassle of painting your walls, then you can tape your walls instead!
”A room should never allow the eye to settle in one place. It should smile at you and create fantasy. -Juan Montoya
You can use a variety of colors to make random stripes or abstract patterns, and it will look great on walls behind sofas or paintings, or even toilets.
Go Discrete
If abstract isn’t your style or you’re just not comfortable with bold colors or big changes, you can also start small and do something a little more discrete. It’s still very interesting and tasteful.
Go Artsy
You can make some very interesting art pieces with washi tape. It can either be on a canvas or on the wall directly. There are no limits other than your imagination to what you can create with tape.
Go Simple
If you don’t have much time (or patience), you can try doing some interesting yet simple designs. It doesn't take much to change the look of your room and make it unique and incredible.
Go Crazy
If you’re more spontaneous and creative or just don’t have much patience for planning, you can just grab the tape and go crazy. Start making shapes, stripes, and patterns randomly. The end result is going to look very interesting and unique.
Go Small
You can use washi tape to decorate small things, like your laptop, your phone case, notebooks, your switch covers, and so on.
Faux Frames
Another very interesting idea for using washi tape is making faux frames to create a colorful gallery wall. Especially common among dorm rooms, the tape can just be ripped out by the end of the year.
Remodel Your Doors
An easy way to renovate the look of a room is decorating the doors. You can use washi tape to make patterns - like simple striped or checkered pattern - or even more elaborate ones. You can also try making frames on the windows or make stripes on the blinds.
In this Almost Makes Perfect DIY you can learn how to make some decorative borders for your closet doors, which transform them from boring to cool.
Renovate Your Furniture
If you’re not keen on taping your walls but still want to change the look of your space, you can try using washi tape to renovate your furniture and home appliances. You can use it on your:
- Bedroom furniture
- Office desk
- Lamps
- Ceiling fan
- Fridge
- Pretty much anything
For the Kids
Using washi tape to decorate your kid’s room and baby room is a great idea. You can try doing something cuter for the baby room, or if you have older kids, you can use their ideas to create something new or even let them do it with your supervision.
The Practical Side
Are you always getting the wrong power cord when you want to plug your device? Do your pens keep disappearing in your workspace and somehow appear in the hands of your co-workers, who swear they didn’t take it? Fear not, there is a solution for it.
You can use washi tape to mark your things like power cords, pens, pencils, workspace things, cutlery, etc. Even the house key! Some of you may lose valuable time trying to find the right one on the keychain when you are dying to use the toilet, when you’re getting home or simply can’t wait to lay down after work. Everything can be “marked” to make it stand out and save you time.
With this DIY from The Chic Site, you can easily label your cords so you don't waste valuable minutes trying to decide which one is the one you need. Also, if your phone charger or USB cables keeps getting mixed up with your family's or with your coworkers, you can easily wrap it with the tape to make it more colorful and unique, so it can easily stand out from the others.
Not Permanent
One of the best things about washi tape is that it isn't permanent. Whether you want to change the look of a rental space or if you simply get bored with your decor often, you can easily take the tape off or change it any way you want to. You can change the designs, add more pieces on your wall (like adding more frames for photos) or even take it off completely, without any effort. If you put it recently, you can just rip it off. Piece of cake!
What to do when the glue of the tape stays on the wall?
If you put the tape recently, it should just come right off, very easily. But what if there is residue tape? Or worse, what if the tape takes the paint off of the wall? Don’t panic, with patience and care you can take it off without problems. One of the easiest ways to take dried and old masking tape or washi tape off the wall is lubricating it, using a solution of warm water and dishwashing detergent, it is usually effective. If the tape still clings to it and is a little bit stubborn, you could check out this HomeGuide article, which is very detailed and demonstrates different ways of dealing with this issue.
So, what do you think of washi tape being used as a decorating tool? Do you like it? Have you tried it? Comment below, or let us know on Facebook or Twitter! We’d love to hear them!
Check out our Pinterest board for more creative ideas on how and where to use washi tape.
