Wall panelling in Nairobi

Panelling has gone from a period detail to one of the most searched things in Kenyan interiors: wall panelling measures 1,300 a month, and it barely registered a few years ago. It is also one of the best margins we work at, because the material cost is modest and almost all the value is in the setting out.

What it costs

A feature wall of 20 to 30 square metres typically runs KES 90,000 to 210,000 supplied and fitted, depending on the profile, the material and whether it is painted on site or prefinished. Market ranges reviewed September 2026, not a quotation.

The three kinds people actually want

Fluted is the current favourite: half-round or rounded-square sections run vertically, close together, giving a ribbed surface that catches light down its length. It reads as expensive and it is not, which is most of its appeal. It is also the least forgiving of a wall that is out of plumb, because every flute is a straight line for the eye to check.

Slatted uses square or rectangular battens with a visible gap between them, usually over a dark backing so the gaps read as shadow. The gap is doing the work, so the batten spacing is the whole design, and it wants to relate to the width of the wall so you do not finish with a half-gap in the corner.

Framed and wainscoting is the traditional one: stiles and rails making panels, at dado height or full height. It suits older Nairobi houses and it looks wrong in a new apartment, where fluted or slatted sits better.

Setting out is everything

Panelling is a simple thing to make and an easy thing to get wrong, and the failure is always the same: the setting out.

The pattern has to be centred on something that matters. On a bed wall that is the bed, not the wall, because a headboard slightly off the centre of a flute pattern is visibly wrong. Around a television it is the screen. Where panelling meets a door or a window, the reveal needs a whole element rather than a sliver.

Getting that right takes a drawing and a conversation before anything is cut. It costs nothing and it is the difference between panelling that looks designed and panelling that looks applied.

Material

For painted work, MDF, and this is one of the cases where MDF is straightforwardly the right answer rather than the cheap one: no grain to raise, dead flat, and it machines to a crisp profile. Sheets run about KES 2,800 to 3,500.

For a stained or clear finish, solid timber, because MDF cannot take a stain convincingly.

Behind a slatted panel, the backing board is usually painted dark before the battens go on, and painting it afterwards is almost impossible. That is one of those small sequencing things that separates a good job from a frustrating one.

Where not to put it

Bathrooms and anywhere that gets mopped, if it is MDF. Behind a cooker. And on a wall with rising damp, which panelling hides beautifully for about a year and then makes considerably worse, because the panelling stops the wall drying and you have moved the problem out of sight. We would rather point at the damp than cover it.