Original wallcovering was a dark , rustic , textured (and outdated) torn and overlapped paper . Smoothed , prepped , primed , and ready for wallpaper . Done! Bright , fresh , and with visual movement from the swirly leaf pattern .Opposite side of vanity / countertop . Mirror shot showing wall behind the vanity / sink . Wall opposite the vanity / mirror . The pattern is called Priano .
The color is called Dusty Pink – it’s a very livable pink. This is very popular pattern , and I’ve hung it a bunch of times, in every colorway . It’s one of my favorites, too. I love the soft swirling foliage , and the simple two-color scheme . This makes it a very easy pattern to live with , whether it be one accent wall or a whole room . In fact, the pattern is so soft and un-intrusive that it makes a wonderful choice for papering all the walls in even a large room such as a bedroom or dining room (Search here to see the dining room I did in the soft blue version .)
Made by Serena & Lily
I like the quality of just about everything from this company. This is a paper wallpaper , and goes up nicely . Like most traditional wallpapers , this is installed by pasting the paper . The home is in the Champions Forest area of northwest Houston . installer paperhanger
Oh, boy – more boring white walls . Now brightened with soft blue color and lightly shining / metallic gold trees . The gold branches and trunks have a raised texture . The manufacturer is York , one of my favorite brands. The pattern is called Luminous Branches , and is similar to their Shimmering Foliage pattern , which is bolder and is in the Candice Olson line . This wallpaper is a non-woven material , and can be installed by the paste the wall method – but I usually prefer to paste the paper , especially in a powder room with pedestal sink and toilet and other objects to trim around and slip paper behind . N-W papers are minimum 20% polyester , and thus are strong and durable and more resistant to stains than traditional paper wallpapers . When the surface is prepped properly and the paper is hung properly, N-Ws are designed to strip off the wall easily and in one piece and with minimal damage to the wall when it’s time to redecorate . They’re also easier to install and more DIY-friendly . The home is in the Memorial Villages area of west Houston .
This is the kind of a room that you don’t just look at the walls – you have to stand in the room and feel it. Dusk settling into night , swooping birds , stormy clouds . This looks a little like hand-stitched embroidery . This textured natural material is a fine sisal , which is similar to grasscloth . The color between panels was pretty uniform , as you see at the seam toward the right of the photo . These panels came 33″ wide . But for this last strip on the right, I only needed 23″ width. That means I would have 10″ of width , the length of the strip, to cut off and discard . If I had used the left side of the strip, which is logical installation sequence , we would have had birds’ butts sticking out from the side of the window molding . So I decided to trim off that left side and instead use the right side which, as you see, has a more pleasing bird’s face and wing . The brand is Phillip Jeffries , a high-end company . The material comes as a 6-panel set . You have to purchase six panels, but after that, you can buy individual panels in sequence, so you’ll have enough to do your room , without having to purchase a full 6-panel set. Like I said – this stuff is pricey! This dining room is in a renovated 1925 home in the Heights neighborhood of Houston . installer
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.
Before. Walls primed and ready for wallpaper .Vanity area done. This blue , brown , and metallic gold material has the warm look and texture of real grasscloth, but is much more water- and stain-resistant and consistent in color . It also has a pattern that can be matched , so the seams are much less visible than with real grass . Note that some of the lines you’re seeing in the photo are cast by the light fixture .Going around these arched windows took a while!Toilet wall without lights off.With lights on, you see the true colors more accurately. Note the light fixture casting vertical stripes on the wall .Like many thick, textured vinyl products, the edges curl back just a teeny bit, due to how the material is trimmed at the factory. Believe it or not, run your finger over this seam and you’ll feel that it’s perfectly flat. In fact, this look is typical with real grasscloth, because the edges tend to fray up a bit. From two feet away, you don’t notice any of this.This material mimics the look and texture of real grasscloth .Another wall, along the shower . One nice thing about grasscloth is that, since you don’t need to match pattern motifs, you don’t have to paper walls in sequence or order. We were a little tight on material on this job, so I hung my full length walls first, then went back and hung the shorter walls. This helped me plan usage – how many strips needed and how many strips I could get out of each roll / bolt of paper . Made by York , one of my favorite manufacturers.
Here I’m moving right to left, fixin’ to have my last strip of wallpaper meet up with the first strip I hung (which you see on the left). Because the corners are never perfectly straight, and because wallpaper can stretch when it gets wet with paste , and for other reasons, it’s not possible to pre-trim the width of this last strip, because it won’t be the exact perfect width. So you cut this strip 1/2″-1″ wider than the gap. That means that it’s going to wrap 1/2″ or so around that corner. So you’ll have to trim off the excess. In this way, you’ll be able to get a custom fit into that corner. But, you’ll also get paste slopped onto that strip on the left. Some papers you can wipe the paste off easily. But others are more delicate and can be damaged or stained . Why take a chance?Here is the strip that’s going to fill that gap. I’ve paste it . Next I’ve run a strip of thin blue plastic tape along the edge that will be overlapped onto the existing wallpaper in the corner. This will keep paste from coming in contact with the wall on the left. I also like to place this tape on the top of the strip, to protect the ceiling. Especially important when there is not crown molding and the paste will be bopping into the flat paint on the ceiling (difficult to wipe off). You can do a Search here to see other posts where I have photos of the trimming taking place, and then removing the excess paper and the blue tape. Here you see the finished corner . This blue tape is pretty useful. It’s also helpful when double-cutting ( splicing ). Another great feature of this blue tape is that it snaps apart quite easily, so you don’t need a scissors or blade to cut your pieces. It’s imported from Japan. (Those guys have a lot of cool wallpaper tools.) It can be purchased here https://www.wallpapertoolstore.com/product/blue-cut-tape/ Some people use waxed paper cut into strips, or yellow caution tape, or painter’s plastic cut into strips. But nothing parallels the usefulness and quality of this blue cut tape .
Note: The camera has altered the colors here a bit … the blue is actually a lot more toned-down and murky . I hung this back in 2020. This bungalow in the Houston Heights / Woodland Heights is very Arts & Crafts in style … that’s a decorating theme that was popular back around the turn of the last century . The manufacturer is Bradbury & Bradbury , who specializes in recreating the feel of by-gone wallcoverings , especially from the periods of Victorian , Arts & Crafts , Oriental , Modern Age , and more. The color is a little more true here. A wide wallpaper border like this is called a frieze , and was poplar in Craftsman styled homes back about the turn of the last century .
Just about every wall and surface in this home is white . This super fun , super colorful pattern really energizes the little girl’s room / nursery . Before, with my tinted- blue wallpaper primer Roman Pro 977 Ultra Prime applied.I love contrasting the colorful wallpaper to the plain “before” look. Red flowers centered under the window , so it will look nice falling around the crib . Close-up .The manufacturer is the popular Rifle Paper , made by York . I love this brand – but beware of printing defects , which have been popping up more and more these last few years. Also, Rifle Paper is usually a DIY-friendly non-woven or paste the wall material . So I was surprised today to find this is a traditional paste the paper product . Actually, I’ve had a good handful of RPs lately that were paste the paper . These two materials call for completely different installation methods. The PTP takes more time and equipment , too. The home is in the Woodland Heights neighborhood of Houston .
Before. Walls painted with a deep, murky teal blue. I’ve measured the width of the border and then applied my wallpaper primer 1/4″ narrower than the border. That’s the white you see around the top of the room. I love the way the teal / blue walls coordinate with the green in the border (a tall , vintage border like this is called a frieze ). Painting the walls the same color as the border would have been too much, IMO. Plus, you can never get the color exactly perfectly the same – so it looks like what I call a “near-miss.” Better to opt for complimentary colors , as this homeowner did. The color in some of the leaf detail also coordinates with the avocado green in the adjoining living room – you can see a snatch of this color at the far left of this photo. The camera is making this color brighter and greener than it actually is, but you get an idea of the design . Once the Victorian era faded away, the Arts & Crafts movement came to be in the very early 1900’s , with less fru-fru and more nature , clean lines , whimsy , and stylized designs . The home also has furniture and decor that hark back to this time period . The pattern is called Apple Tree Frieze , and comes in several colorways . The manufacturer is Bradbury & Bradbury , in California. They are the go-to company for 19th & 20th century historic patterns . Delicious stuff on their website! Bradbury can be tricky to install, so not for novices . Different colorways can call for different adhesives / pastes , so be sure to read the instructions before starting . The bungalow home in the Houston Heights dates to 1920 (possibly earlier) which is just smack in the middle of the Arts & Crafts decorating style . I hung another period-correct border in this room for this family 10 years ago. Now they’ve done some updating with new colors and, of course – a new wallpaper border frieze . It was a pleasure to be back and help bring new life to the place!
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