Board Spacing Calculator
For vertical board accent walls — calculates the equal gap between each board and at the edges.
Placement style
For vertical board accent walls — calculates the equal gap between each board and at the edges.
Placement style
Vertical board accent walls only look right when every gap between the boards is identical. This works out that gap for you, so you can mark the wall once and nail with confidence.
The wall width, minus the width of all the boards together, is the space left over for the gaps. There is always one more gap than there are boards (one at each end, plus one between each pair), so the leftover space is divided by the number of boards plus one: gap = (wall width − (boards × board width)) ÷ (boards + 1). The result is rounded to the nearest 1/8 inch, because that is what you can actually find on a tape measure.
Example
A 96-inch wall with five boards that are 5 1/2 inches wide: the boards take up 27 1/2 inches, leaving 68 1/2 inches of gap to share between six gaps — about 11 7/16 inches each.
Subtract the combined width of all your boards from the wall width, then divide what is left by the number of boards plus one. That gives you an identical gap at each end and between every board.
They rarely are, and chasing a round number is the most common mistake. Nobody looking at the wall can tell an 11 7/16 inch gap from an 11 1/2 inch gap — but everybody notices when one gap is wider than the others.
1×4 (3 1/2 inches actual) and 1×6 (5 1/2 inches actual) are the most common. Narrower boards with more of them reads busier and more modern; fewer, wider boards reads calmer and more traditional.