A Really Nice Faux Grasscloth , Suitable for Bathrooms

The homeowner wanted the look of grasscloth, but didn’t want the stains that can happen when splashed with water or toiletries.  Another displeasing feature of real grasscloth is the very visible seams , and the likelihood of color differences between panels (called paneling or shading ).  So she opted for this textured vinyl version.  She loves the look.  It is a handsome room!

Original 1990’s paper has been stripped off, Roman Pro 977 Ultra Prime wallpaper primer has been applied, and we’re now ready for paper!

This material has a pattern that matches from strip to strip, so you don’t get the eye-jarring look of broken fibers at the seams , like with real grasscloth or other natural materials. 

Here’s a close-up, detailing the texture.  About ¼ from the right is a seam – it’s barely noticeable . 

Opposite wall.  For balance, I plotted that the seams fall at the same point on each wall – 18” from the mirror frame

I’m getting ready to hang a strip that will knock against that mirror frame.  To keep paste from slopping onto the molding , I’ve applied this thin, flexible blue plastic tape along the edge.  This will keep paste off the molding while I trim that strip to fit against the molding.  Once that trimming is done, I’ll remove the blue tape and then smooth the wallpaper back into place.

Since this is a dark wallpaper, I worry about the light colored primer peeking out at the seams.  This can happen because sometimes the factory hasn’t trimmed the edges perfectly straight , or the wall may have uneven areas or bows , or some papers shrink a tad when they dry .  So here I’ve plotted where the seams will fall and have striped the area with diluted paint .

I use bottles of craft paint from the hobby store (good old Texas Art Supply !), and apply with a scrap of sponge .  And my trusty Gatorade bottle cap with water, to dip the sponge into to dilute the paint … you don’t want full strength paint under there.  Wallpaper wants to adhere to a primer made for wallpaper – not paint designed to color Christmas ornaments. 

Another and probably more important trick is to color the edges of the wallpaper.  This navy blue wallpaper was printed on a white stock / substrate , and it’s highly likely that the edges of that substrate will show at the seams .  So, again back to Texas Art Supply (or a good hobby store) for chalk or pastel , which I run lightly along the edge from the back so as not to get any color onto the surface of the wallpaper .  That little dark nub you see is my chalk… the stuff breaks easily.  It’s important that you not get oil pastels or use any kind of ink marker, as these will leech into the wallpaper and stain it, leaving you with a nasty dark line down the seam . 

I really liked this product.  It was flexible enough to wrap around a rounded / bull-nosed corner , but stiff enough to not warp .  It’s on a non-woven substrate , which contains polyester , which makes it less likely to shrink .  This stuff is also designed to strip off the wall easily and in one piece with no damage to your wall when you redecorate .  Another advantage of non-wovens is that they can be pasted and hung immediately, with no booking or wait time.  Although I generally prefer to paste the paper , you also have the option to paste the wall with this material.
The non-woven backing won’t be sucking up humidity like the paper backings used years ago (or in modern lower-end products), so greatly reduced chance of seams coming loose if your teenager spends an hour steaming up the bathroom . 
The vinyl surface means that it will be resistant to stains from water , toothpaste , and little (and big!) hands . 
In addition, I liked that the material has a realistic grasscloth look, and a realistic texture , as well as a pattern that could be matched, which helps disguise the seams.  I didn’t match the pattern in the corners, though, to avoid having the horizontal bands running around every wall of the room at the same height.  Looks better to break it up a bit.  Also gave me more flexibility in placement of seams.   
The brand is A Street Prints and is in their Scott Living line  (as in the Scott Brothers of HGTV fame). 
The home is in the Champions Forest area of Houston .   
installer paperhanger

Rifle Paper Peacock on Master Bedroom Accent Wall

The entire bedroom is to be wallpapered . Originally, all the walls were a soft sage green . The homeowner wants the room to be a sort of retreat . Here the walls are primed and ready for wallpaper .

Done! What a fun pattern . Peacock is very popular. At first the homeowner wanted this on all four walls. But I mentioned that the circular movement of the design could be overwhelming all the way around the room. So she opted to put the bold pattern on just this feature wall, and chose something quieter for the remaing three walls.

IPositioning the first strip . I plotted to have the peacock fall down the center of the wall, so it will be balanced nicely behind the headboard . Note that the center of the peacock isn’t perfectly in the center of the wallpaper, so I had to position the strip a little off-center on the wall, so the peacock’s body would hit the center point .
Because this is a dark paper and sometimes the wall peeks out from between the seams , I’ve striped black paint under where the seams will fall. Not too heavy, though, because you want the wallpaper primer to still be able to do its job, part of which is to be grabbing and holding the seams down. I use a heat gun to get the paint to dry quickly.

I just use acrylic craft paint from the hobby store ( Texas Art Supply , which is close to me). I daub some paint on a scrap of sponge , dip it in a small amount of water (in the Gatorade bottlecap) to dilute it a bit, and then run it down the wall, using the light beam from my laser level as a guide.

I also use pastel chalk to color the white edges of the wallpaper, so they are not visible . Be sure that what you use is chalk and has no oil … oil will stain wallpaper and other surfaces (think potato chips on a paper napkin). This Rembrandt brand is oil-free. Apply from the back, getting color on the edges only, and not on the surface.

This is a non-woven / paste the wall material. It’s strong and durable and stain-resistant . In addition, it will strip off the wall easily and in one piece when you redecorate, leaving no damage to the wall.
installer Houston

Preparing To Work With Black Wallpaper

Black wallpaper’s gonna go on this wall . Because wallpaper sometimes shrinks a tad as it dries , and because manufacturers can’t always guarantee a perfectly straight cut edge , it’s possible that some of the wall will peek out from behind the seams .

One way to prevent this is to stripe dark paint on the wall under where the seams will fall. This wallpaper is made of non-woven and won’t expand as it gets wet with paste . Each strip is 27″ wide . This makes it easy to measure and plot where each seam will fall.
The center of the pattern is not placed in the middle of the wallpaper strip, but 10″ in from the left edge . I used that information to calculate where the seams would fall .

The paint I use is just craft paint from Michael’s or Texas Art Supply . I thin it with water (in the orange Gatorade cap) and swipe it on the wall with that scrap of sponge . It’s important not to make the paint too thick , because you want the wallpaper to be adhering to the wallpaper primer , and too heavy a coat of craft paint will prevent that primer from doing its job.

After laying out where each seam will fall, I use this laser level to shoot a vertical red line onto the wall, as a guide for where to swipe on the black paint .

Because this wallpaper is printed on a white substrate, it’s possible that that backing will show at the seams. So I use black chalk – again from the art supply store – to run down the edges of the wallpaper .

There’s been an uptick in interest in dark colors in wallpaper these days.

This wallpaper is by Rifle Paper .

Translucent Wallpaper

Beware that some papers are thinner and more see-through than others.
Look closely, and you can see the shadow of the wallpaper inked pattern underneath this top layer of wallpaper.
Nothing wrong with this. Just something to be cognizant of.
So just be sure to not write too heavily on the wall,* nor to make dark pencil marks on the back of the wallpaper.* Because they may telegraph through to the surface after the wallpaper is up.
*For instance, I write measurements, and also notes like strip sequence on the wall. And on the back of the paper, I always mark the top of each strip, and also the number / sequence each strip should be placed on the wall.
Also just a note – always write in pencil , or chalk. NEVER make marks on the paper or on the wall in ink or marker – these substances bleed through wallpaper, paint, and other materials, and will leave a nasty stain on the surface of the paper.

Welcoming Room for Mother-in-Law

This young couple hosts the mother / mother-in-law a few times a year, and are lucky enough to have a private spare bedroom for her. To make it special, they wanted to jazz up the area a little. Enter this fun and whimsical wallpaper pattern .

The room before was a pretty shade of murky teal – but needed personality and warmth.

The wall started out with a light orange peel texture . I skim-floated the wall, and then sanded it smooth .

Along the baseboard at the floor , here’s the dust from sanding , along with the sanding sponge I use – this is a modern take on the idea of wrapping sandpaper around a block of wood .
I tack painter’s plastic across the wall from ceiling to floor to prevent dust from getting into the room or onto the furniture .

Here’s the wall smooth and primed , ready for wallpaper .

Since this is a dark wallpaper and I want to be sure that the white wall does not peek out from behind the seams, I stripe dark paint along the wall under where the seams will fall. Because non-woven papers don’t expand when wet with paste , it’s simple to measure the width of your strips and plot out where each seam will fall. Use the laser level as your guide . Do a Search here (upper right hand corner) to read more about this technique.

I use craft paint from Texas Art Supply (or any hobby store ), diluted with water from a Gatorade bottle cap , and applied with a scrap of sponge .
Further insurance is taking a chalk pastel (never oil pastel – oil bleeds and will stain wallpaper) and running it along the edge of the wallpaper strip – from the backside to avoid staining the surface – to cover the white substrate the wallpaper is printed on. This is to prevent white from peeking out at the seams , which can happen with dark papers.

Centering the first strip in the middle of the wall, and using my laser level to ensure the strip is nice and straight and plumb .
Note: The strip is not centered on the wall. The dominant pattern element is. Notice that the center of the dominant pattern motif – the white circular flower – is 3.5″ to the right of the left edge. This means that I had to position the left edge of the wallpaper 3.5″ to the left of the center of the wall, in order to get the round white flower to fall down the center of the wall.
When you look again at the finished photo, you’ll notice that the white flower falls down the middle of the walls, and that it also appears at equal distance from both the right and left walls.
Most people wouldn’t be able to put their finger on this symmetry , but it is something they subconsciously notice , and it lends a feeling of orderliness to the room.
As orderly as you can be, that is, with pigs dancing around the meadow dandelions !

Finished accent wall . The three other walls painted in blue were a bit of a surprise, because one would think the more dominant color of green would be used. But with so much green in the wallpaper, green on the walls, too, would have been too much, perhaps. I like the cool feeling that the blue creates .

There is plenty of the exact same blue in the wallpaper pattern to tie the walls and wallpaper together.

Close up shows the stamped printing technique .
You’ve gotta love a frolicking pig in a hand-knitted sweater!

This pattern is called Hoppet Folk and is in the Wonderland line by Borastapeter , a Scandinavian company .
It’s a nice, sturdy but flexible non-woven material that can be hung via the paste the wall installation method .
In addition, this product will strip off the wall easily and in one piece , with no damage to your walls, when it’s time to redecorate.
This is a very popular pattern, and I’ve hung it more times than I can count, just in the last two or three years. It does come in other colors – but most people gravitate toward this black version.
The townhome is in the Rice Military area of central Houston .

Grasscloth Engineering and Logistics – Technical Details Post

Grasscloth is a natural material that cannot be matched from strip to strip, so all the seams will be visible . In addition, there is usually a slight but noticeable color difference between strips / panels (called shading or paneling ) . So it’s important to plot the layout of the strips to give the most visually pleasing overall look. Usually this means balancing the width of strips so they are all equal , at least on the same wall . We call this engineering .
This wall presented particular challenges , due to the widths of the elements. Grasscloth comes 36″ wide . You can use your straightedge and a sharp razor blade and trim it down to any width you want.
The width of both the large wall spaces to the right and left of the bank of windows was 34.” The width of each window was about 35.” The width of the two spaces in between the windows was 7.”
So you’d think I could trim my panels on either side of the windows, and then over the windows, to about 34″-36″ – give or take a few inches (or fractions thereof).
But that would leave me with two 7″ wide strips between these 35″ panels. Although the look would be uniform and mirror-image from the center outward, moving from right to left you’d have: 35,” 35″, 7,” 35,” 7,” 35,” 35,” … those 7″ breaks were just not going to look right.
One option was to determine the width of the wall (189″) and make each strip an equal width. This worked out to six strips, each at 31.5″ Not good, because this would mean a seam down either far side. And since those sides were 34″ wide, that would mean a 31.5″ wide strip and a strip 2.5″ wide. Not attractive at all, and it would use up an extra strip of wallpaper.
This six strips @ 31.5″ wide scenario might also land with a seam smack in the middle of those 7″ wide interludes in between the windows. Not attractive at all.
So I decided to make the two outer strips 35″ wide. That left 119″ of wall space above the windows to be covered with wallpaper. Do some math and you get four panels of 29.75″ wide. This gave a balanced and uniform look to the area over the windows, and also prevented seams from landing between the windows.
Moving right to left, I cut and hung the full length outer strip first. Then I cut and hung the strip over the window on the right. Then I measured to find the centerpoint of the window in the middle. Turns out it was a bit less than 29.75″ away. So I trimmed that next over-window strip accordingly.
Once that was in place, I measured from that center point above the middle window out to where my left full-height panel would fall, 35″ out from the wall. Took the resulting measurement and divided by 2. Lo and behold, each of the next two panels over the window was going to be a bit wider than 30.” No problem. No one (but a paperhanger or maybe an engineer) is going to notice a 1/4″ or even a full 1″ difference in widths between this strips over the windows.
Another thing to point out … it’s important that I took measurements before cutting these strips for this second left-hand section. Because, since grasscloth comes at 36″ (and walls can be wonky), if my strips had been narrower (say, 28″), that last full-height panel on the left might have ended up needing to be 37″ wide – and that wouldn’t work because it only comes 36″ wide – plus you need at least 1/8″ to wrap around the corner.
Luckily I had the flexibility to be able to trim the panels over the windows to any width needed, to accommodate all this.
If you’ve followed all this so far, let me also toss in that we also need to figure how to get paper in between those windows. More on that below.
In this scenario, I’m moving from right to left.

Area beneath the windows needs to be treated in the same way, and preferably with widths that match what’s going on above the windows. In addition, it’s tricky because after you move across 12′ of wall space, the strips above and below the windows are going to twist and torque out of shape, so that last full-length panel on the far left might not butt up perfectly with the last strip under the windows.

The grasscloth is black , and my wallpaper primer is white . It’s common for teeny gaps to appear at the seams . In this case, it’s likely that white wall would peek out from those gaps. So I like to stripe under where the seams will fall with dark (diluted) paint . This takes measuring , plotting , and also a heat gun to get the paint to dry before the wallpaper hits it, to avoid staining. You can do a Search here to read more about this technique .
Now let’s talk about getting wallpaper in between those windows.
As you can see in the photo, if I hang a 30″ wide strip, a whole lot of paper is going to be cut off and thrown away. Also, a whole lot of sticky, pasted paper is going to bump against that window molding and maybe even the window glass. A lot to clean up! And unwieldy, to boot.
My solution was to stop the wallpaper just a little below the tops of the windows. Then I would patch in a 7″ wide strip in between the windows. This is trickier than it sounds, because, if it were a paper wallpaper, I could simply cut along a design motif and overlay the 7″ wide piece. But grasscloth is thick and overlaps don’t look good. Also grass has no design elements , and the reeds of grass don’t necessarily fall perfectly horizontal , and even if you cut everything perfectly true to square , if the window molding is a teeny bit off-plumb , then your edges won’t butt up perfectly.
So that’s a good reason for striping the black paint under where the butt join will occur.

Same thing for the sections under the windows. I measured and positioned the strips so that the top edge (which I had trimmed to be perfectly horizontal) fell between the narrowest part of the windowsill molding, for less visibility.
I admit, instead of butting the two pieces, here I did overlap the 7″ wide strip about 1/4″ onto the piece under the window, right at that narrow junction. It’s only about 3″ wide, and I figured no one is going to be examining it that closely, anyway. This saved me about a half an hour of measuring, trimming, testing, repeat, repeat.
This is my second window interlude, and by this time I had realized that it’s hard to trim stiff grasscloth around intricate moldings precisely . So I used paint to fill in the edges around the window molding, just in case there might be any gaps between the grasscloth and the molding, so you would see black instead of the white molding paint. I did this with a small sponge; if I had used an artist’s brush it would have been a bit neater and tighter to the conforms of the molding. But sometimes you’ve gotta relax and realize that no one’s going to be scrutinizing the insides of moldings below shin-level.

Area over windows finished, with drapes back in place.
Turns out this particular grasscloth is so uniform in color (quite unusual, I will add), that you can’t really see the panels , nor their equal widths , anyway. I’m still glad I took the time to do all this math and trimming.

Area below the windows, done. That last seam on the left bears some explanation, too. Moving across the top of the windows, I measured that that last strip – the full-length strip – would need to be exactly 35″ wide. It butted up nicely to the last strip above the windows.
But, due to twisting , shifting , expansion , unlevel and unplumb walls and ceilings , and other factors, there is a really good chance that that last 35″ wide strip would not butt up perfectly with the last 30″ wide strip under the window . So I planned to splice these last two strips together.
Yeah, the drapes are hanging there, I coulda overlapped the two strips about 1/2″ and the drapes would have covered it. With a thin wallpaper, I probably would have done this. But grasscloth is thick, and an overlap would be visible , and also the adhesive / paste can’t be trusted to adhere as well to grass as it would to paper .
So I plotted for a splice. Instead of trimming my last strip under the window to 30″ (read above), I trimmed it to 32″ wide. That way, when I hung the last full-length strip to the left, which was 35″ wide, it overlapped the piece under the window by a few inches. Then I did a double cut and spliced the two pieces. See below for details about that technique.

Grasscloth is 36″ wide, and this wall area is wider than that. So two strips were needed. This means you’re going to have a seam, and since grasscloth seams are always visible, it looks best to plot to have the seam fall down the center. It uses more wallpaper to do this, but it looks much better than having, for example, a 36″ wide strip next to an 8″ wide strip.
As mentioned above, in case you get thin gaps at the seams, a dark stripe of diluted craft paint under where the seam will fall, will prevent white wall from showing through.

Rounded / bull-nosed edges and corners have been popular in new construction for at least 10 years. I wish they’d go away. They’re very difficult to trim around, and hard for the paper to conform to and adhere to.
It’s very hard to trim around that rounded edge, because the paper is hanging over and blocking your view, because grasscloth is thick and stiff and your fingers can’t feel through it, and because the edges aren’t necessarily true and plumb so a laser level or other level won’t help you much.

I use this little gadget as a trim guide. It’s actually a small section of the same corner bead material that drywallers use when they assemble these walls. Cut to about 1″ long and notched in different places where you might trim along the edge of the wall.
It’s intended that you place your trimming knife in one of the notches and slide the gizmo along the edge and make your cut. I find that awkward and also inaccurate. So I prefer to use the notches as a guide and mark where I plan to trim with a pencil. Since this wallpaper is black, I used this marking pencil from my home sewing kit instead. Chalk might work, but I was afraid it might now wipe off completely.
The pink pencil line was barely visible, but it was enough for me to use a scissors to trim along the grasscloth. I like this better than using a razor blade as I can see better, and also less chance of scoring into the primer or wall. Which raises its own set of issues – do a search here to find previous posts.

Inside view of the trim guide.

Finished arch. Note the four panels of equal width above the arch. And two flanking full-height panels also the same widths.
I was lucky that there was no pattern to match, so I was able to butt my two flanking strips right up to the edge of the bull-nosed corner. No trimming needed! Then I measured the remaining width between these two strips (the area over the arch), divided by four, and cut four strips of equal widths.
I hung the two on the left, and then one on the far right. This left one strip still to be positioned to the right of center. So the pieces are going to meet over the arch, rather than the last strip falling in a corner.
Same as the last strip under the window (discussed above), it’s really difficult to get your last piece to fit in here perfectly. I’ve done it, but it takes a lot of measuring, trimming, testing, retrimming, and often starting all over again.
So I did a double-cut / splice.

A double cut involves cutting each strip an inch or so wider than it should be, and overlapping the two. Then you take a straight edge and sharp razor blade and cut through both layers. This handy tool is a wonderful non-slip guide for this process. It was invented by an installer colleague in the Wallcovering Installers Association ( WIA ) and she has them fabricated in various lengths (along with other cool tools ) and sells them on-line. Contact me if you’re interested.
Anyway, it takes a lot of strength to cut through two layers of grasscloth, so somewhat difficult for lil’ ol’ me.
You also want to be sure to not cut / score into the wall, because the tension of drying wallpaper can tug at the wall and cause it to actually come apart, leaving an open seam that’s difficult to repair.
So you’ve got to put some padding under the wall where the cut will take place. I use special strips of polystyrene (hard but flexible plastic) to pad the wall. Also invented by a colleague in the WIA , who also sells other cool tools and supplies. Contact me if you’re interested.

This black grasscloth was printed on a white substrate. If the seams aren’t absolutely tight, there can be worries about the backing showing through to the front. So sometimes we’ll take a piece of chalk or pastel (never oil pastel or permanent markers because they bleed and stain ) and run it along the edge of the paper – from the back, and taking care to not get chalk on the surface.
I do this frequently with dark papers ( do a search here to see previous posts ) but opted not to do it with this grasscloth. It wasn’t necessary, and might have stained the porous reeds of the grass. It was beneficial, though, to have striped dark paint on the wall under the seams, as mentioned above.

Ugh. Grasscloth comes 36″ wide, and this section of wall is 38″ wide. It’s not visually pleasing, nor is it easy from an installation point of view, to have a 36″ wide strip next to a 2″ wide strip. Or to use scraps and put a 25″ wide strip next to a 13″ wide strip.
So best to plan two strips of equal widths. Two strips, each 19″ wide, with the seam down the middle.
Actually, the strip on the left was 19″ wide, but I trimmed the strip on the right to 21″, because I like the wallpaper to extend 2″ over the top of the door molding. This provides a more stable surface in case of shifting foundation or walls, and less likelihood (knock on wood) of the seam opening up should the house / drywall experience shifting.
Note that design “rules” caution against seams down the middle of spaces. But it would have been more visually distracting (and used up more paper) to have made three strips of each 12.75″ wide. And would have looked even dumber to have used scraps left from other walls and put together two strips of disparate widths.
So the homeowner and I discussed during our initial consultation , and she was happy with the center seam. Once it was all finished, this particular grasscloth was so even in tone that you barely see the seams, anyway. Win-win!
This did use up additional paper, though, as noted in a previous photo above.

Floaty Palm Mural in Master Bedroom

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 .

Leopards Prowl Inspired Powder Room

Vanity wall was originally textured and painted with a semi-gloss . Here it’s been skim-floated , sanded , and primed – ready for wallpaper.

Finished. There’s a cool light-up mirror that will hang on the brackets under the light fixture .

Opposite corner before.

Finished. This room wouldn’t have half the impact without the black moldings and ceiling. The homeowner said she envisioned a jewel box – all tufted and lined with velvet . Well, I’d say she nailed the look!

As the dark and mysterious wallpaper moved from left to right, the room began to take on a mood . I love the juxtaposition between a clad wall and a bare wall.

Close-up.

Detail.

The husband is handy, and I really appreciate that he removed the vanity and sink . This made it a lot faster and easier for me, and ensured better adhesion of the wallpaper around the plumbing pipes . And also eliminated stress and creases on the paper that can happen when bending and folding to work it around obstacles.

Here is the modern looking vanity that will go into the powder room .

To keep white primer from showing at the seams , I striped black paint on the wall under where each seam would fall. Do a Search here to read previous posts about this technique.

I use matt finish craft paint from the hobby store , a scrap of sponge , and a bottle cap full of water . Do a Search here to read previous posts about the process and materials .

I also run chalk along the edges of the wallpaper, to cover up the white substrate , to ensure there will be no white peeking out at the seams . Again, do a Search on key words to learn more about this technique .
Dang it! I forgot to take a picture of the label! But this wallpaper is by York and is called On The Prowl .
It’s vinyl on a non-woven backing . The instructions said you could paste the wall for installation . But I pasted the paper, and I think with this product it’s better, because it did seem to want to expand a bit. If you paste the wall and then the paper stretches, you’ll end up with buckles at the seams or bubbles within the strips .
The material was fairly flexible , which was nice because it allowed me to “mush” the paper to conform to some pretty un-plumb walls.
Although York is one of my favorite brands , I wasn’t real crazy about this particular wallpaper. Still, it seamed up nicely, didn’t shrink, has a vinyl surface that will resist splashes and fingerprints , and is designed to strip off the wall easily and in one piece when it’s time to redecorate .
This is a townhome in the Rice Military area of central Houston .

Dark and Moody Bedroom Accent Wall

The wall has been skim-floated and sanded smooth , primed , and is ready for wallpaper .

The homeowner did a great job coordinating the wall and ceiling paint with the colors in the wallpaper.
This is a room that’s made for sleeping!

At first I thought the pattern scale was too small for the large wall. But once I saw it on the wall, I really like the way it fills the space.
To me, this pattern has a sort of calico look.

Close-up shows the light texture on the paper.

This is a non-woven material, so I’m installing via the paste the wall method . Here I’ve cut and arranged all my strips in the order in which they will be hung . This is a drop match pattern , which some folks think of as A and B strips. Meaning, for instance, an orange flower appears at the top of the wall on Strip A . But the next strip, Strip B, has a yellow flower at the top. When you get to the third strip, we are back to an A and an orange flower. Next comes another B strip – and so on.
I’ve rolled the strips backward , with the top of the strip coming off first. This will prevent the printed face of the wallpaper from bumping into the pasted wall during installation .

Wallpaper often shrinks a tad when the paste dries , and this can result in very minute gaps at the seams . With dark wallpapers , it’s pretty important to take steps to prevent white from showing at these gaps. Here I’ve measured out where each seam will fall, and taken diluted black paint to make a dark stripe under each seam . I don’t make the paint full-strength, because wallpaper paste isn’t formulated to adhere to paint. I want the wallpaper adhering to the primer I’ve applied. That’s also the reason why you don’t want to roll paint over the whole wall.
Also, I have only striped some of the seam areas, and will wait until some strips are up on the wall before striping more lines. This is because wallpaper expands when it gets wet with paste, which can make it difficult to plot the exact width of each strip as you move across the wall.

I use acrylic craft paint from the hobby store, applied with a bit of sponge. I keep a small dish of water to dip the sponge into, which dilutes the paint a bit.
You also see a stick of chalk pastel . See next photo.

Besides the wall peeking out from behind the wallpaper seams , it’s also possible / probable that the white edges of the wallpaper backing / substrate will show at the seams. I take a stick of chalk and run it along the edges, making sure to apply from the backside, to avoid getting chalk onto the surface of the wallpaper.
Be sure to use chalk pastels and not oil pastels – oil will bleed and stain wallpaper. Some installers use liquid paint or markers – again, be sure to use water-based or acrylic , and never oil based or permanent markers .

BN Walls is the brand. Altogether, this was a pretty nice product to work with. It was thin and very soft and flexible (many non-wovens are not).

I wasn’t happy with all the seams, though. I believe the paper was cut with dull or wobbly wheels at the factory, because the edges seemed to not be perfectly straight . So I ended up with gaps and overlaps in some areas. Here you can see the wallpaper edges pouching up a bit due to excess paper.
But, as I mentioned, this material was quite flexible, so it was pretty easy to spread these edges apart an use a tool to push them apart and then down to prevent them from pouching up again. Once the paste started to dry, these areas held nice and tight and flat.
This is a townhome in the Rice Military neighborhood of central Houston .

Dwunk Cwitters – Dark Seams

Re my previous post , it’s very common for wallpaper to shrink just a tad when the paste dries, and this can leave you with teeny gaps at the seams. So when hanging a dark paper like this, I like to stripe a band of black paint under where the seams will fall. This way, if the paper does gap at the seams, you will see dark, and not the white wallpaper primer .

I measure and plot where each seam will fall and then run a stripe of diluted water-based craft paint (from Michael’s or Texas Art Supply) under where the seam will be. I wet a scrap of sponge and dip it in the paint, adding water as needed. Don’t make it too thick or dark. Because you want the wallpaper adhering to the wallpaper primer underneath all this.
On top of the wallpaper primer, the craft paint dries pretty quickly. But I use a heat gun to be sure the paint is good and dry before hanging each strip.
Don’t paint more than one or two stripes at a time, because wallpaper stretches and expands when it gets wet with paste , and it’s difficult to predict exactly where each seam will fall. For the same reason, be sure your stripes are at least 1/2″ wide, if not a full inch.
Additionally, I’ll take a pastel chalk (NOT an oil pastel – oil stains wallpaper) and run it from the backside along the white edges of the wallpaper, to prevent any white edges from showing at the seams. Do a Search here to see previous posts about that trick .