How to Cover Popcorn Ceilings with Beadboard: Step-by-Step Guide

There must’ve been a time when popcorn ceilings were the A+ move in home renovation but since that time is obviously long gone, we are big advocates for covering them with beadboard for a more classic, polished look.

We’ve covered up popcorn ceilings in about 10 rooms in our last two houses so feel like we have the process pretty downpat, but over the years we’ve tried all kinds of ways from nailing it directly up there to dropping the ceiling, covering it with faux beams and adding molding.

We just did our most recent beadboard ceiling in our playroom last weekend and so now we’re here to share our self-appointed expertise in this matter to tell you the best way to go about this project to cover popcorn ceilings.

Different types of beadboard

Beadboard comes in a few different ways, but for us, the big 4×8 sheet MDF panels you can buy from Home Depot or Lowe’s are the way to go for the best value for money and look. They’re about $27 a sheet – compared to the 7” x 8’ planks which are a lot more expensive, or the real wood ones that are heavier and require priming – and do the job perfectly fine.

A note on safety

Adding beadboard over a popcorn ceiling is so much easier and less messy than scraping it all off (plus it looks better than a flat ceiling in our opinion). But, it should be noted that even though you’re covering the ceiling you may disturb the texture while you’re working, so if you’re working in an old home it’s a good idea to scrape a little bit off and send it away for asbestos testing before you get started.

We’ve used kits like this before.

Anyway, onto the best way to cover a popcorn ceiling with beadboard.

The preparation

Like I said, we’ve gone ahead and just nailed up the sheets before but depending on how rough and bumpy your popcorn texture is, the end result can sometimes look a bit wavy if you just nail and it’s hard to get it all looking really flat. The method we prefer – which we just used this weekend – is instead to screw 1×4 pieces in a grid pattern on the ceiling, trying as much as possible to secure those screws to ceiling joists.

First, any existing ceiling trim or crown molding in the room needs to come down, and any light fixtures or fans need to be removed so you can work around them.

Then, the 1x4s should be installed flat around the full perimeter of the room, then spaced apart in each direction so the middle of the 1×4 is right at 48 inches. The reason for this is that when you put a sheet up in place, the panel will end right in the middle of a 1×4 giving you space to nail that sheet into the 1×4 for extra strength, but leaving enough space for the next piece butting up to it to have a spot to nail into as well.

Here’s a view of how it looks:

This does add more cost to the project with the expense of the screws and the wood, but it’s 100% worth the extra time because of how easy it is to line up all the pieces once you get to actually nailing in the beadboard panels.

Note: it’s a good idea to stop every now and then as you’re lining up the grid to check that the middle of the 1×4 hits at 48 inches and you haven’t veered off course, but we’ve found that cutting a spacer piece of wood to hold up as we nail also helps keep everything straight.

Cut the panels down

You could go ahead and hold up the whole 4×8 sheet and nail it into place if you have superhuman upper body strength (and we’ve definitely done it this way before), but we like to cut the panels in half so we’re working with 4×4 squares instead which is so much more manageable. You could use a table saw for this, or even a jigsaw or circular saw. We’ll get to this further in a little bit, but if the end cuts are a little bit wobbly, it’s not a huge deal because they’ll be covered up in the end.

Nail up the pieces

This will take two people and two ladders, but once all the prep work with the 1×4 grid is done, then this part actually goes quite quickly. Hold up the 4×4 sheet in one of the corners of the room, trying to get it as straight into the center of the intersecting 1x4s on the ceiling as possible. Nail all along the edges until until the sheet feels secure against the 1×4.

Keep going with the next sheet, prioritizing making the longways edges as seamless as possible. If there’s a little gap either at the edge of the ceiling where it meets the wall or between the cut ends of the panel, it’s okay as long as that gap is less than about two inches.

Then just keep going until all the pieces are in place, stopping to cut around any obstacles with a jigsaw (it can be a bit tricky especially to measure and cut for light fixtures/fans etc.!)

Add your trim

At this point, it does look a bit rough with the wonky way the panels meet at the ends, but this is why caulk and trim wins any fight it’s ever been in. When two pieces of the beadboard panels meet longways (along the bumps), it’s easy to caulk them and make them look seamless, but at the ends of the panels it’s almost impossible to make that go away.

We have in the past made mini faux beams by screwing a 2×4 along the seam and wrapping it in primed wood, but the cheaper and quicker way to do this is to use 1×3 or 1×4 to cover along the seams like a ceiling detail. We start by adding our 1×3 or 1×4 around the whole edge of the room as ceiling trim (we aren’t on that crown molding budget), then start across the seams of the ceiling.

How we approach it is to have one of us hold the piece up and the other person stand on the ground and kind of eyeball if it looks straight. Not very official, but it’s worked for us!

We’ve done just the one row of molding across as though it’s a beam, and we’ve also gone ahead and added perpendicular pieces so it looks like a grid on the ceiling. This is really just personal preference on the look of the room, but the pieces across the butted-up seams are really the most important part.

Caulk and paint

To be totally honest, we don’t usually paint our beadboard panels and just cover up the nail holes, but sometimes you can have issues depending on the lighting of the room with the sheen of the caulk/spackle being different to the gloss of the beadboard panel which isn’t the best look.

Again, personal preference but if you’re painting the ceiling sheets, I’d definitely recommend pre-painting then touching up the nail holes once they’re up on the ceiling. With the method of adding the 1x4s to the joists in the ceiling first, usually most of the nail holes are covered up with the decorative 1x4s that go over the top, which is an added bonus!

Then, you need to caulk all along where the beadboard meets any of the 1×4 or molding pieces, and where the panels meet lengthwise. This makes a huge difference. Then you’re done and your dirty old popcorn ceilings are no more!

We have loved this method for covering popcorn ceilings – we’ve been doing it for years – because at this point it’s essentially a one- or two-day project for us, and it’s the kind of thing you can tackle room-by-room as you’re working. We’ve done about four rooms in our current house, and will probably do the bedrooms at some point, too.

I’d love to see photos if you take on covering popcorn ceilings with beadboard, and as always, feel free to reach out with any questions or comments! Oh, and you should definitely sign up to our newsletter and follow along on Instagram.

Happy DIYing!