Can You Spot the Pattern Match?

In the first photo, the pattern is incorrectly matched. In the second photo, it’s matched as it should be.

At first glance, you would think that every diamond on the left matches every diamond on the right. Not so! There is a subtle difference between a given diamond and the diamond below it. This means that every OTHER diamond will be the pattern match, not every diamond.

In this case, and especially since the paper was going on the ceiling, the eye would probably not catch a mis-match. But I still made it a point to match it correctly – sometimes even a slight mis-match will cause a noticeable visual break at every seam.

One more thing about this pattern… Because it’s so “scratchy,” it’s one of those nice patterns that doesn’t really HAVE to match perfectly. This enables the paperhanger to maneuver the pattern a little… For instance, your eye would want to see the same flower, for example, at the top of the wall. If the ceiling line is crooked, the flower might start to drop down the wall. But with a “scratchy” pattern like this, it’s possible to mis-match it a little, to work the flower back up to where it is at the top of the wall.

This is a Thibaut wallpaper pattern, and went on the ceiling of a large powder room.  Tomorrow I’ll post a photo of the sidewall paper.

Tags: pattern match, Thibaut, wallpaper