Please see yesterday’s post for the “before” photo. Here’s the master bedroom suite all finished. There’s a dramatic feature / accent wall behind the headboard with Rifle Paper ‘s beloved Peacock pattern . On the remaining three walls is Rifle Paper ‘s Garden Party Trellis . RiRight side of the room. The homeowner is a single gal , and she wanted her master bedroom to be a relaxing retreat , but with a distinct feminine edge . Well – here you’ve got it!! Left side of the room. Look here, and at the photo above, and you’ll see how nice this uniformity looks. It was tricky! See subsequent blog post for info on how I did this. Window wall – which took me five hours, BTW! She’s going to add window treatments that will be feminine – but the exact choice remains to be unveiled.I pulled some tricks to get the flowers centered down the middle of the window columns. See a following post to see how I did this. Pattern nicely centered on closet wall.
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Another nicely centered section of wall. Close-up. This pattern is just fun. I like to say that it looks like the flowers are smiling . Closer-up. The homeowner loved the ” column ” look of the vertical pattern . The pattern is called Garden Party Trellis , and is a companion to the very popular original Garden Party made by this company Rifle Paper . Which is made by York. Many Rifle Papers are printed on the non-woven / paste the wall material, which has many advantages – stain-resistant, dimensionally-stable , strong, strips off the wall easily and in one piece when you redecorate later. But this turned out to be a traditional paper type wallpaper – still good stuff, but a different material that calls for different installation techniques and time frame. I will note that the website stated that this was a nonwoven substrate . I encountered this conflicting information several times lately, so, despite what the on-line specs say, be prepared for any type of install scenario. This is a new home in the Rice Military area of Houston.
Before. The adjoining walls have been painted a complimentary blue. The mom-to-be and I talked about whether or not to paper the sloped area. To me, since the sloped area goes up as high as the blue painted walls on either side, it looks more cohesive to run the paper up to the same height as the painted walls. Note that the sloped areas is a flat surface. The appearance of an upward bend on the right side is an optical illusion. The wall to the right is folding in, and is creating a false image. Horses done! The ceiling in this room was really off-level , and so you see some of the horses’ heads getting cut off as the eye moves to the right. The horses do run straight along under the sloped area, and along the top of the baseboard (not pictured). Close-up shows a linen – like appearance . Note that the seams on Spoonflower are intended to be overlapped, by about 1/2″. The ridges will be visible – more or less, depending on the angle the light is coming from. In the photo above, the sheen on the seam on the right is over-exaggerated due to light hitting it from the side. In real life, once the paste dries and the wallpaper shrinks tight to the wall, you won’t notice the overlaped areas. And one very good thing about overlapped seams – they are stronger, won’t shrink and gap and show white ate the seams , and put less stress on walls with unstable sub-surfaces . This material comes in panels 24″ wide x 12′ long / high. Don’t think that you can use every square inch of that strip. Here you can see that the mfgr cut off the horses’ heads at the top of the strip. So, if I want to place a particular horse at the top of the wall, I will have to roll out the paper and then cut off and discard parts of the pattern that I can’t use. This can be up to a full pattern repeat – which, in this case, was close to 1.5′. That’s 1.5′ wide x 2′ wide, which comes out to about 3 square feet of wallpaper that goes into the trash. Not a big deal. I factor all this in, and have my clients purchase enough paper to accommodate this. Just wanted to emphasize how you can’t plan to use every square inch of wallpaper, and to have the installer measure and calculate how much is needed before you purchase . The manufacturer is Spoonflower , who seems to be having a burst of exposure and popularity right now. They make a few types of wallpaper. I like this one very much, but do not like their other options. So, if you are considering Spoonflower , please buy their ” Prepasted Removable Smooth ” option. Do NOT get their ” Traditional Pebble ” or the ” Peel & Stick .” Both are extremely problematic , and may be short-lived on your walls.
Pretty birds , nicely spaced branches , and lovely colors for this master bedroom in the Heights neighborhood of Houston . This accent / headboard wall is even prettier from a distance . Here’s the wall before. The other three walls are painted a complementary grey .From a distance. I’ve got one more strip to hang , on the far right. Close up . The background is silver with a little gloss to it, but not so much as to be glitzy or garish . I mean, a guy sleeps here, too. So it’s gotta be a bit subdued . This wallpaper is made by Graham & Brown. G&B is a good quality , mid-price range company. Like most of their papers, this is a non-woven / paste the wall material . Much of G&B’s paper is thin and flexible . But this particular pattern came on a thick and stiff substrate . N-W’s contain a minimum 20% polyester content, and I suspect this has a higher percentage . The stuff is somewhat akin to fiberglass . Look closely at the bottom of the photo, and you can see the fibers . This makes it good, and easy for DIY ‘ers , on simple installations like accent walls / feature walls . But it can be trickier when you have to trim around obstacles like windows , decorative moldings , vanities , toilets , and the like.  Non-woven wallpapers are designed to strip off the wall easily and in one piece when it’s time to redecorate , with minimal or no damage to your wall (assuming proper prep was done before installation ). A much better choice than peel & stick .Â
I’m fixin’n to hang faux grasscloth on this accent / headboard wall in a master bedroom in the Spring Branch area of Houston. The textured wall has been skim-floated , sanded smooth , primed , and is ready for wallpaper . The material is 20.75″ (20 and 3/4″) wide . So here I’m measuring off how many strips of wallpaper I’ll need. I’ve counted out seven strips across the wall, and have come to my last (8th) strip. Look at my pencil mark – it’s at 21.” Remember that the paper is 20 3/4″ wide. This means that, to cover that last, scant 1/4″ width , I’ll have to use a ninth strip. Which will be a whole 9′ high strip that’s 20.75″ wide. Useing a 1/4″ wide strip off a 9′ long length leaves us with a whole lot of waste – paper / square footage just going into the trash. This is, again, why you should not purchase wallpaper based on square footage. It’s more a matter of determining how many strips you will need – factoring in the pattern repeat, etc. Even better , have the wallpaper installer make a site – visit and calculate for you. Going a step further … Since this is a (faux) grasscloth and has not pattern match , the seams will all be visible . So we try to balance the panels on the wall. Meaning, the wall will look better with panels of equal-widths, instead of, for instance, eight panels at 21″ wide and one at 1/2″. For the record, it also looks better to not have a seam fall at dead-center on the wall. Better to have that center panel straddle the mid-point. With this particular install, that’s what I chose to do. I took the first (let’s just call it 21″ wide for ease) … I took the first 21″ wide panel and used my laser level to line it up so 10 1/2″ fell on either side of the center line on the wall. So, this first panel was straddling the center line. From there, I used full-width (21″) panels one either side. Until I got to the last panel on the left, and the last one on the right. These two ended up each being about 15″ wide. So I had seven panels that were 21″ wide, and then two flanking on either side that were 15″ wide. This gave the wall a nice, balanced, uniform look. Yes, I could have hand-trimmed each strip to 19″ wide or whatever the math would have worked out to. But my option was simpler, faster, maintained uniformity between the majority of the panels, as well as uniform width on the two outer panels, eliminated the worry of gaps at the seams due to unevenly trimmed rigid vinyl goods, and the 6″ width difference wasn’t very noticeable. And, also, since this was a faux grasscloth and color variations were minimized, you could hardly see the seams, nor the width of the panels, anyway. From 5′ away, this wall looked perfectly homogeneous .
Original wall was white, as was the rest of the room, and also the furniture. Here I’ve smoothed and primed the wall, and waiting for everything to dry before installing the paper. Finished. The first-time mom-to-be loves the subtleness of this soft pink color. Note that the pattern, that might seem busy up close, really fades to a background, sort of a texture, when viewed from a distance. The mom-to-be commented that this pattern and color will grow with her daughter and be suitable for many years. Close up and at an angle. The paper has an embossed vinyl surface , providing a light textured look and feel . This wallpaper is by A Street Prints and comes on a user-friendly non-woven / paste-the-wall substrate. This stuff is MUCH better than the peel & stick options that are popping up. When you’re ready to redecorate, this will strip off the wall easily and in one piece, with no damage to the wall. When a pattern is popular , manufacturers will figure out a way to create something similar , without infringing on copyrights. I believe this design to be in response to Thibaut’s Aster , and also to the very popular Feather Bloom by Schumacher. This option is affordable and user-friendly .
Before. Primed and ready for wallpaper . Done. This image could be positioned so that the palm leaves push up from the floor , or, as in the photo , they hang down from the ceiling. This is a popular look right now, and very fitting to an accent / headboard wall in a bedroom . Done. The homeowner bought one mural from Russia before she and I consulted , so it would be difficult to get another. In addition, the mural images don’t continue from right to left, so you can’t place two murals next to each other and have palm leaves continue unbroken . The manufacturer’s picture on-line is misleading, too, because it’s been Photoshopped to look like it fills the whole wall with tropical fronds . As you can see, the actual mural is a lot narrower than the wall, plus shorter by about a foot and a half. The mural is placed slightly off-center on the wall , because the homeowner wanted it centered on the bed , which sits a little to the right of center . Plans are still incubating, but she’ll probably have wooden panels or trim placed on the wall flanking the mural as well as beneath it, to give a finished look. All in all, I think the room looks dreamy !Close-up .The material is vinyl and has a woven fabric – like texture . The mural came in four panels, each about 3′ wide by about 8.5′ high . Here I am laying them out so I can get measurements and to be sure they go up in the right sequence. There were a lot of these little black specks of a chalk – like substance on the back , and even some on one area of the front . Did I tell you this came from Russia ?! Sorry, no brand name, but this was thin and very flexible and pretty nice to work with . This is a popular design concept , and many companies are making similar patterns . Try RebelWalls.com , which is super quality and really good customer service, plus tons of designs and images to cover your walls .
Textured wall has been skim-floated smooth , primed , and ready for wallpaper .This pattern is called Smoky Rose and also London Rose . Both are appropriate!Charcoal on an off-white background . Up close, it looks like water color strokes.The wallpaper is by House of Hackney . Most of their wallpapers are the user-friendly non-woven material. This one surprised me being a British pulp. This is a rather old-fashioned basic paper material with no protective coating. It’s brittle when dry and gets soggy when wet with paste, making it tear easily or to drag when the razor blade runs across it. Definitely takes a different approach during installation . I was lucky enough to have hung a pulp just the day before, so was in good practice! Although not resistant to stains and tricky to work with, I do like the matt finish and how the paper dries tight and flat to the wall.
Headboard accent wall before. Textured wall was skim-floated and sanded smooth, then primed. Now it’s ready for wallpaper.Finished.Closer look.Detail. The seams were invisible. The lines on this paper are raised a bit, so there is a 3-D effect. I hung this non-woven wallpaper by the paste-the-wall method. Here I have rolled the strips backward, to prevent the decorative surface from hitting the paste on the wall. When I’m at the top of my ladder, I will take off the elastic hairband and let the paper unfurl down to the floor. It’s rolled so the top of the strip comes off first. I have measured the wall and noted where the center point is, then determined where I want my first strip to fall. The black box in the foreground is my laser level, and you can see the vertical red line it’s shooting at the wall, which is where I am going to line up my first strip. Positioning the wallpaper strip along the vertical laser line. This muted geometric pattern is in the Jaclyn Smith Home line by the Trend division of Fabricut. It was mighty nice to work with, and will hold up for years until the family is ready for a change of decor. Then, the polyester-content non-woven material is designed to strip off the wall easily and in one piece.
The home is in the Memorial Villages neighborhood of Houston.
Re my previous post, before I visited, the homeowner had purchased 8 rolls (4 double roll bolts) of paper. This was just exactly enough (12 strips) for the headboard wall, but I told him to order 16 more to do the rest of the room. The new paper came in a different run. So we had Run 16 for the headboard accent wall, and Run 17 for the other walls.
(You can’t mix runs on the same wall, because different runs, printed at different times with different batches of ink, will be slightly different shades. This very slight color difference will show up on the wall as a striped or “paneled” effect.)
The wallpaper is by York. It is a non-woven material, comprised of synthetic fibers rather than wood and cotton. The synthetic material does not expand when wet with paste, which means the wallpaper can be hung via the paste-the-wall method, with no “booking” or “soaking” wait time needed.
Interestingly enough, Run 16 behaved differently from Run 17. I hung the accent wall with Run 16 quite successfully using the paste-the-wall method.
But when I started the next wall using Run 17, bubbles and wrinkles developed. The paper was absorbing moisture from the paste and expanding on the wall, creating the small bubbles. Quite unexpected with a non-woven material.
The solution was to paste the back of the wallpaper, rather than the wall. This allows the material to absorb moisture and expand a tad before you get it to the wall, so it will behave itself once it is on that wall.
Unlike a traditional paper, this non-woven material did not need a lot of time to absorb moisture, but could be pasted and hung immediately. This greatly speeds up the installation process.
Pasting the paper has an additional advantage in that it renders the material more supple and pliable, which makes it much easier to work around corners or manipulate into position in tricky areas.
Primed and readyPattern nicely centered on this focal wallClose up
“Les Touches” (touch/dots/blots) is a decades-loved pattern by Brunschwig & Fils, a French company.
It has movement, but, having only two soft colors, is subdued. Thus it works nicely on one accent wall. Or, as in this young girl’s bedroom, on all the walls.
I hung this wallpaper in the Tanglewood / Galleria neighborhood of Houston.
Note that the hour-glass striped pattern is hard to see if you are only looking at a strip of wallpaper on your table. Before hanging, it is important to look up the pattern on-line or in a selection book, to see what the overall design and secondary pattern will look like when played out across a wide wall.
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