Chevron vs herringbone: what actually changes at the saw
Most people asking for one of these is describing the other. Herringbone is the word everybody has heard, so it gets used for both. Then the boards get cut and the wall comes out wrong.
Here is how to tell them apart before you turn the saw on.
The one-sentence version
Chevron pieces are cut on an angle and meet at a point. Herringbone pieces are cut square and step past each other.
If the two ends do not close into a clean point, what you are looking at is not chevron.
What each one does at the saw
Chevron. Every piece gets mitered on both ends, at whatever angle you picked. Left-hand pieces and right-hand pieces are mirrors of each other. Two of them meet in the middle and close into a point, and that point stacks straight up the wall, row after row. The saw is set off 90 for every single cut.
Herringbone. Every piece is cut square. 90 degrees, all the same length. You lay them at an angle to each other, and the end of one board butts into the face of the next one, off to the side. Nothing meets at a point. The saw only comes off 90 for the fill pieces where the pattern dies into the edges of the wall.
So it is not a small difference in look. It is a different set of cuts from the first piece.
What each one reads like on the wall
Chevron reads as a row of arrows pointing up, with a seam running straight up the middle where the points meet.
Herringbone reads as a broken staircase. Each row is offset from the one above it by half a board, so nothing lines up vertically. That offset is the pattern. It is what makes herringbone look like herringbone.
That stagger is also the reason you cannot turn one into the other by changing your cuts. The rows themselves are stacked differently.
Herringbone is harder to build, and it is not close
Herringbone stacks your mistakes.
Think about tile. Every tile registers off the one beside it. Get one joint slightly off and the error does not stay where you made it. It travels. By the time you are halfway up the wall the whole pattern has drifted off center and it is obvious from the doorway.
Herringbone works the same way. Each board is positioned off the board before it, so a cut that is a hair long or a hair short pushes everything after it. You start seeing gaps, and the gaps grow.
Chevron does not do that. Every piece lands on the frame independently. If a piece sits an eighth high or an eighth low, that is where it stays. It does not pass the error along. Nobody is going to spot an eighth on a painted wall unless they put a tape on it.
For a first accent wall, that forgiveness is worth more than any difference in the look.
Picking your chevron angle
If chevron is what you are after, the angle is yours to choose. 45 degrees works fine and it is the easiest number to remember standing at the saw. But 35 degrees is the one that looks right in a room. It gives you a longer, lazier arrow, and on a wall you have to live with every day it is easier on the eye.
35 is what I use on most of my own jobs.
Once you pick the angle, it stays put. More columns does not change it. More rows does not change it. What changes is where each piece lands against the frame, and that is where the time goes.
The part that eats your afternoon
Every chevron piece has to end somewhere. If it dies into a vertical batten, that is one cut. If it ends on a rail instead, that is a different cut. And if it lands on a rail and a batten at the same time, now you are cutting two angles on one end that have to meet in a corner.
None of that is beyond a homeowner with a decent miter saw. I have cut plenty of them. But it is a saw setting change and a bit of fussing on every piece that does it, and on a full wall there can be a lot of them. Multiply that out and the afternoon is gone.
The way around it is spacing. Space the chevrons so the bottom left of the piece just touches the bottom rail corner, and the peak just touches the top corner on the other side. Land it corner to corner like that and every cut is a single angle.
Getting that spacing by hand means sitting there with a calculator pushing numbers around until it comes out even.
Which one do you actually want
If you want arrows with a clean point up the middle, that is chevron.
If you want the staircase look with the offset rows, that is herringbone.
And if you came here having said herringbone out loud but you have been picturing arrows this whole time, you are not the first one. Most people are describing chevron.
Before you cut anything
Measure your wall at both ends and in the middle. Ceilings sag, floors run downhill, and corners are rarely 90 degrees. Build to the numbers you measured, not the numbers you assumed, and scribe your last piece into the corner rather than expecting it to drop in.
Plan around your outlets from the start. They do not move for your pattern. If the new material sits proud of the drywall, the box needs an extender so the cover plate still lands flat. Those are in the electrical aisle, plastic or metal, and they are required by code, not a nice-to-have.
Use MDF over pine. No knots, no grain fighting you, and it stays flat. Every point where two pieces meet gets filled and sanded before primer, because a gap at the point catches shadow and you will see it from across the room. Glue and pin, and hit studs where you can.
Get the chevron spacing done for you
If chevron is the one you want, the chevron calculator does the corner-to-corner spacing and hands you the lengths. Put in your wall size, pick your angle, and it places the pieces.
I use it on my own jobs. Twenty years in and I would still rather have the numbers given to me than guess at them standing in front of a bare wall.