Board and batten siding starts with wide vertical boards. The batten strips join the boards.

It isn’t often you see that detail in houses now. Usually, the wall has been sheet rocked and the batten applied for decoration. Geometrically, the pattern is one foot apart. I like the look of it 3/4 of the wall.

You don’t say how “rough” the walls are, but you could also investigate Anaglypta wallpaper. It covers most imperfections.

It comes in so many fabulous patterns and you can leave it white or paint it. Here it is a herringbone pattern.

Hi Judy. Thanks for taking the time to respond to my question. You're right, it used to be common as a way to protect walls. Nowadays, we mainly see it in more expensive homes.

Good call. Real anaglypta (and lincrusta) is tough as nails, ridiculously expensive, and drool-worthy for those of us who appreciate old homes loaded with woodwork. As I recall it's now only made in England on remaining antique equipment.

What they're billing as anaglypta wallpaper now appears to be made of molded Styrofoam (or a close cousin) glued to paper. I did my stairwell and a bathroom in the beadboard style "anaglypta" wallpaper. It looks exactly like the real thing. I would caution you against it, or to only use it in low traffic areas or on ceilings (that beadboard one is a great way to cover up a freshly-scraped popcorn ceiling). Put it in a busy hall or stairwell, and the next time you're carrying a bag of groceries bearing canned goods that happen to bump into the wall you'll discover it dents and tears way too easily and after awhile looks bad. I'm going to remove mine and put in real paneling on the stairwell. I need it to cover up bowed and lumpy walls from shoddy carpentry. My hall bath is in occasional adult use and it's holding up better.

You do have a great idea, though. If someone wants to do board and batten on a textured wall, they could apply the boards to the wall, then cut out the beadboard anaglypta and place it between the boards to cover the texture. It will apply over and hide not-too-high texture, such as a lot of the orange peel type. I would still sand lightly or scrape just to knock off the high spots. The boards would give it some protection, depending on one's living situation. If I sand, then paint and it doesn't look flat/smooth enough, I'll probably do just that, and the photo you provided is another alternative that could be interesting by adding texture. I did try some sanding last night and it looks like I might be able to get it smooth enough. Thanks for the idea!

The real stuff:

This is my inspiration photo for the room I'm doing first. It looks like these are maybe 3' apart and also like they had tall ceilings or only did very short wainscoting.

I just took a measuring tape to the board-and-batten paneling in my dining room. I have 3 doors/doorways, three windows, a fireplace and a hutch, so lots of uneven spacing of architectural breaks. I have one 15 inch stretch of wall with one batten down the middle. It seemed like they were shooting for 12 spacing (batten on-center), but another of the sections I measured was 11 3/4. So there was definitely some squishy math involved. I can't get to my longest stretch of wall to measure because I'm in the middle of a remodel and most of the contents of my kitchen are stacked against that wall in boxes (in front of the shelving that already made it hard to get to the paneling). I will say that I have been in this house for 10 years (and in the upstairs unit with an almost identical dining room for 13 years before that) and had never noticed or given any thought to the battens being uneven.

ETA, my house was built in 1910 and the paneling is original.

Thanks Cawaps. I hope your remodeling comes out great for you! How wonderful to have some of the original wood trim.