Before. Smoothed, primed, and ready for wallpaper.After. It’s more of a “dusty salmon” than a true “pink.” The parents are leaning toward a light sage green for the remaining three walls.Close up.Mock-up. While this is a typical repeating pattern, the manufacturer chose to package it as a mural, rather than standard rolled goods. This format works well with digital printing, and allows murals to be custom-sized to fit any wall. (Note: This mural is only offered in a standard size, 12′ wide x 9′ high.)Rolling panels out on the floor to check measurements, plot placementManufacturer is Koko Art, a family-owned business in Florida.
With its black outlines and over-scaled flowers, this pattern is a bit bolder than you see in most nurseries. But the muted tans and salmons keep the look soft and sweet.
The remaining walls will be painted, but Mom wanted to see the mural up on the wall and in the room’s lighting before she chooses a paint color.
This product was packaged as a 6-panel mural. While many murals these days are custom-sized to the customer’s wall, this one came in a set size – 12′ W x 9′ H. It’s important that the mural be 4″ wider and also 4″ higher than your wall, to accommodate trimming at floor, ceiling, and corners, and to accommodate wonky walls and unlevel ceilings.
Koko Art Shop offers three substrate options. Two were peel & stick, so I nixed that sorrowful stuff. Instead, the family chose this lovely pre-pasted option. It went up very nicely.
The home is in an established community in Cypress, far northwest Houston.
Oh, and – the baby girl was born early this morning. It was an honor to help get the room decorated and ready for her arrival home!
Re my previous post … the strips on this 6-panel mural are intended to be overlapped, by about a full inch.
There are advantages to this. Since wallpaper shrinks as it dries, it an result in gaps at the seams. Overlapping the seams prevents that.
Wallpaper that is drying and shrinking is also tugging at the wall behind it, which puts stress on the surface. If that surface is unstable, this tension could cause the layers inside the wall to give way and pull apart, resulting in open seams and a delaminated sub-surface. Overlapping the paper redistributes and minimizes the tension, and it also eliminates an open area where the two sides of the seam could pull away from the wall.
A disadvantage of the overlap method is that you can see the cut edge of the paper (see photo), and you also end up with a 1″ wide ridge running under the paper the full length of each seam. In this case, with such a busy pattern, you are not going to see that ridge.
Going around windows, especially wide windows, can be tricky. Wallpaper expands, it twists, the design can travel up or down from the ceiling line – and all this can go on independently of each other, with the sections over the windows moving out of whack at a different rate than the strips below the window.
The challenge then becomes, when the next full-length strip is hung, joining the strips over the window with those under the window … getting the pattern to line up and the strip to lie flat on the wall without torquing out of shape.
In this case, the pattern lined up pretty well. But strips under the window ended up being wider than those over the top. So there was a 1/2″ overlap, which would mess up the pattern match. This 1/2″ also caused the full-length strip to warp and develop a wrinkle.
This was an easy pattern and placement for dealing with such issues. All I had to do was cut along one of the palm tree stems, slide the strip up so the palm leaf pattern lined up, straighten out the full-length strip and work out the warp, and overlap that 1/2″.
All that sounds simple. But the truth is, I probably spent the better part of an hour getting it all to work out.
Coordinates beautifully with the dark green sliding barn door
I admit, I wasn’t crazy about this pattern at first. I thought the skinny vertical elements would look too “stick-y.” But as it started going around the room, well – it looks fantastic. I think it helps that there are lots of windows and doors to break up the pattern.
The daughter has moved out and Mom is commandeering the room. She “says” it will be a guest bedroom. But I suspect she plans to use it as her private retreat. 🙂
Guest bedroom, before.Wallpaper adds so much dimension and personality. And it makes the room look larger, too!
So often, it’s impossible to perfectly coordinate fabrics and wallpaper. One manufacturer makes the fabric, and another makes the wallpaper, both independent of each other – and, of course, the inks and dyes will never be absolutely, perfectly the same.
Amazingly, in this case, all fell perfectly into place, and the homeowner’s searching found the perfect union. The color of the tufted headboard coordinates absolutely perfectly with the “Alabaster Pink Mint” colorway of the Cole & Son “Palm Leaves” wallpaper.
Ink smudge. One of many printing defects throughout all the rolls of wallpaperReplacement paper came in the same run number as defective paper. Not good.Despite the label, the replacement paper (on the right) must surely be a different run. Note the pattern mis-match, as well as color discrepancy between the two strips. The motifs on the left are lighter and yellower than those on the right.
When I originally set out to hang this Anderson Prints wallpaper in a northwest Houston powder room, there were too many printing defects to be acceptable. The homeowner had the store send it back, and we requested that the replacement paper be from a different run (printed at a different time and with a different batch of ink), to ensure that the new paper would be defect-free.
The replacement paper arrived with the label stating the same run number – Run 2. But I have to question that. I think they stuck the wrong labels on the new rolls.
For one thing, notice the pattern mis-match, between the original rolls (left) and the new paper (right). This indicates that the trimming rollers were set at different points in the design – and that can only happen when the presses are set up to print off a new batch / run of wallpaper. (I’m tossing in an educated guess on that one … Another scenario could be that the trimming wheels got wobbly and rolled out of “true.”)
Either way, these two bolts of paper were not printed and trimmed at the same time.
You will also notice a pretty obvious color difference between the original paper (left) and the replacement (right).
Again, it’s pretty certain that these rolls were not printed at the same time from the same batch of ink.
Textured walls have been smoothed and primed. Ready for wallpaper!The design looks as if it were sketched on with artist’s chalk.
Grey, tan, white, and cream are very popular colors these days, so this wallpaper suites the modern vibe of this newly updated home in the Willowbrook / northwest area of Houston.
Every time a family member snuck into the room to take a peak, the word I heard was “calm.” Indeed, this color scheme is truly calming.
The surface of the wallpaper has a unique, dry feel to it – almost chalky. It gives it a blissful, matt finish.
The manufacturer is Anderson Prints, in their Eco Chic line, and was bought from Ted at the Shade & Drape Shop on Richmond & Kirby.
Nursery wall smoothed, primed, and ready for wallpaperBattling ships fill the wall space with dramatic actionThe action continues to the left of the doorMore battle action on the opposite wallClose upDetailManufacturer is Rebel Walls, from Sweden. I like their products.
A baby boy is due in a few months. For his nursery, Mom wanted an action-packed, historic nautical look. She found this mural on RebelWalls.com
Usually you see a mural on one accent wall. But here we have two companion murals on opposing walls in this nursery. I think it works swimmingly! 🙂
The mural was custom-sized to fit each wall. The website also allows the option to choose which portions of the design you want. So Mom chose to put the largest battleship on the main wall that you see when you walk into the room. A smaller ship and quieter scene was plotted to go on the opposite wall.
I will note that, on both murals, the company did include some motifs that were not on the customer’s order sheet. That changed the dimensions and placement of the ships on the wall. It all worked out O.K., though, with the stormy vessels positioned perfectly on each wall.
Custom-sized to fit each wall, the murals came in 8 panels, plus one panel that was just 4″ wide. It was a non-woven material, which is designed to strip off the wall easily and in one piece when it’s time to redecorate. It can be hung via the paste-the-wall method, which is what I did today. It can also be hung the traditional way, which is to paste the paper. The seams are virtually invisible.
This home is in the Garden Oaks / Oak Forest neighborhood of Houston.
Rolling out two bolts of wallpaper side-by-side on the floor is a good way to see the overall pattern. This helps me gauge where I want to place certain elements of the design on the wall. I can also observe the pattern match. And I can determine what motifs I want to place at the top of the wall – or, in some cases, at the top of a chair rail or wainscot.
Walls were originally mud-brown. Here my wallpaper primer has been applied. So lively and fresh!Close-up.Detail. It looks like a water color artist has taken his brush to the walls.Wallquest – one of my preferred brands.
A once-drab, cookie-cutter powder room in a new build in Cypress (far northwest Houston) is now airy and fresh, thanks to this water color-y pattern of trees, leaves, and birds.
The manufacturer is Wallquest, and the wallpaper was purchased at Ballard Designs. This well-loved mail order company has a brand new actual store on W. Gray in River Oaks / Montrose (Houston). They sell a number of wallpaper brands (good quality and medium price range), and have designers with extensive wallpaper experience available to help you (call before heading over).
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