The “Checkerboard Technique” Is a Brilliant Way to Transform a Blank Wall

There are endless ways to decorate a blank wall. Whether you put up wallpaper, create a gallery wall, or display a large piece of artwork, decorating the walls is key to taking any room from looking incomplete to appearing lived-in and personalized. As important as wall decor is, however, it often serves a more complementary role in a room, supporting the rest of the design elements rather than playing a starring role. It’s rare to see a wall that’s decorated in a way that feels truly novel and makes a statement—but designer Mandy Cheng created a wall display in our 2025 REAL SIMPLE Home that stopped us in our tracks.

Learn more about the designer’s inventive checkerboard wall decor and how you can recreate it in your own home.

Behind the Design

When Cheng was designing the guest bedroom/study for the 2025 REAL SIMPLE Home, she wanted it to feel special and not like the afterthought that guest bedrooms often are in a home. “The thing with guest rooms is that they’re really only utilized, you know, a few times out of the year, so it’s kind of a waste,” she says. “So, for people that need a more flexible space and they want to be able to use the room when guests aren’t there, it’s nice to make it multifunctional.” To achieve this, she focused on making the room feel like an inviting home library with comfy places to sit and “a lot of fun, interesting stuff to look at.”

At the center of the “interesting stuff to look at” is a wall covered in framed mirrors and wallpaper in a checkerboard pattern. Cheng’s design was inspired by the idea of custom millwork that can add an impactful sense of history and character to a space. However, “We were not in the business of doing custom millwork,” she says. “So I really racked my brain on how I could achieve a wall that sort of looked like custom millwork without being custom millwork.” To fake the look, Cheng looked for mirrors with a unique frame style, and she landed on the Janna Mirror from Perigold, which features a wood bead trim.

Rather than simply covering the wall in these mirrors, however, Cheng had the idea to create a checkered formation. She removed the backs from every other frame so that they would show the patterned wallpaper behind. “With the mirrors and the wallpaper coming through, you’re not really supposed to tell what’s a reflection versus what is the actual wallpaper coming through,” she says. “So that’s just like a fun, visual play.”

“And then, all of the walls being painted in a corresponding complementary color just makes the room feel extra cozy,” she continues. The other walls of the room are painted in Valspar’s Sweet Clover, a soft, pea green that reflects the green and blue tones in the Cowboy Toile Wallpaper by Nathan Turner.