In most rooms, when plotting where to position the motifs printed on the wallpaper, you usually consider the top of the wall just below the ceiling. (If the room has a chair rail / wainscoting , or if another feature like a vanity or countertop is dominate , you might position the motifs to fall appropriately along the top of those features.) Back to the ceiling line … You usually want to place a motif at the top of the wall. Because ceilings are never level and walls are never plumb, it’s common for ceilings to go off-track , slanting up or down. This means that, as you hang subsequent strips and move along the wall / room, the top of your motif can move closer to or further away from the ceiling. In this photo , the man’s crown and the top of the roller coaster are the obvious designs to place at the top of the wall. Further down in the wallpaper pattern , any other motifs you might consider are staggered in such a way that if you put one element at the top of the wall, something would be cut off in an unpleasing way. In other words, if you place the hot air balloon at the top of the wall, then the train bridge and part of the roller coaster would be cut off. In addition to that, you need an extra inch or two at top and bottom of each strip to allow for trimming at ceiling and floor. 1″-2″ hopefully. So, you want the crown and the roller coaster at the top of the wall. Plus, you want a little play / extra clearance to allow for those crooked ceiling lines. But this manufacturer has printed its most important motifs just about smack at the top of the strip. There’s no extra to allow for trimming or to accommodate wonky walls and ceilings. This wallpaper comes in panels of set heights, so there is no extra pattern repeat to roll off and discard until you get the motifs you want. As it is, if you try to place that crown at the top of the wall, as you move around the room, it’s quite likely that the crown will move upward and be cut off by the ceiling. OR that it can move down, and that some of the manufacturer’s label will be exposed under the ceiling line. I’ve sent my comments to the company, in hopes that they will start printing to give us a little more play at the top of each strip. This pattern is called Brooklyn Toile , and is in the EZ Papes line of pre-pasted wallpaper by Flavor Paper . I like FP’s EZ Vapes a lot. But not their heavier vinyl, and definitely not their peel & stick material .
OK, never mind the ’80’s-era toilet paper holder that’s recessed into the wall here and is not removable – which presents a challenge all its own. My issue is adding the next strip of wallpaper to the left, turning the corner, and keeping the pattern matched as well as possible in both the inside corner and around the outside corner. Usually, when turning inside corners, you wrap the paper around the corner 1/8 of an inch, and then cut a new strip of paper, match the pattern, and then overlap it that 1/8″ . That helps eliminate issues like mis-matches or wrinkles due to crooked corners or uneven / bowed / out-of-plumb walls . (no walls are ever perfect ) But in this case, we also have an outside corner to wrap. Even though it’s only about 2″ wide, that edge can cause the pattern to go off-plumb , or to create wrinkles in the wallpaper . Going against most rules of wallpapering , I’ve decided to wrap the next strip around this 2″ wide wall and then onto the wider wall to the left . Here I am, starting to position that next strip. I’m not going to try to wrap a full 27″ wide strip around this turn. Instead, I’ve trimmed it vertically along a horizontal stripe , which makes this strip narrower and more easy to handle , and also will help in placement of the next strip. Now I’m pushing it into place into that corner. Note how the paper is wrinkling, both on the wide wall, and as it comes around the 2″ wall. Another shot of the placement and wrinkles . Using my plastic squeegee smoother to press the paper tightly into the inside corner. Note that, since the corner isn’t perfectly straight or plumb, there were a few areas where I couldn’t press the paper tightly into the wall, but had to leave a bit of a gap or air bubble, in order for the left edge to wrap around the turn. The plastic smoother can also be used to gently push out wrinkles on the larger body of the strip of paper to the right. Don’t press too hard , nor overwork , because you don’t want to stretch the paper – that will cause more wrinkles. The plastic smoother took care of the inside corner. Here I’m using my damp microfiber cloth to tightly press the paper around this outside corner . OK. Paper’s wrapped tightly around this corner – but, because the corner isn’t straight , we’ve got wrinkles and warps . Sometimes, you need to take a scissors to make relief cuts to help ease the paper around the corner . Try to make your cuts along an element of the design , to make the slit less noticeable.here is that little narrow bit, finally wrapped around the outside corner. Now we need to add the next strip to the left of this. Note that this narrow strip isn’t straight nor plumb nor equidistant from the corner that we just turned. Nor is it equidistant from the next corner we have to deal with, which is to the left (not pictured). Since we want the wallpaper strips to match in the corners, it’s important that the wallpaper pattern fall in the corner to the left at the same point from ceiling to floor. Complicated to explain. So I’m taking a fresh strip of wallpaper , made sure the pattern matches correctly , and have trimmed it vertically along the tan stripe . Now placing it along this wrapped edge. Because I’m overlapping instead of butting , I’m able to pull the new strip to the right or left, to keep it equidistant from the right outside corner . Or, from the inside corner to the left. Actually, I don’t care much about the right side. The eye won’t notice if the new strip isn’t perfectly plumb . Nor will it notice if the pattern match isn’t 100% perfect . But it will notice if the pattern doesn’t match perfectly in the inside corner to the left. So I’m pulling and manipulating and overlapping the strip a bit, so that the left edge of it is exactly 10-3/4″ from the left edge. This ensures that the pattern motifs fall all at the same point into that corner on the left. Do I can cut my next strip, trim it vertically so the design matches with that in the corner, and get a perfect pattern match in the corner. Kinda difficult to explain, but I hope you can follow what I’m describing. Note that this overlap is causing a bit of a ridge under the paper . Hard to see here, but when the paper dries and shrinks tight against the wall, it will be a little more obvious. But I’d rather have a ridge on the right, than a pattern mis-match in the corner to the left. Oh, and never mind that little pattern mis-match to the right … that’s the paper wrapped around the corner, so you’re looking at different dimensions, not a pattern mis-match. Here is that strip finished. The vertical strips isn’t perfectly plumb, but no one can tell that. ut the pattern is perfectly straight in the inside corner to the left . So when I take my subsequent strip and trim it vertically to remove the right edge by approximately 10-3/4″ , the pattern should match perfectly in this inside corner. (It did!) This “sort of” Greek key trellis geometric design is by Thibaut , one of my favorite brands. It was on a triditional paper substrate , and was hung via the paste the paper method . It was purchased from my favortite source for wallpaper in Houston , Dorota Hartwig at the Sherwin-Williams in the Rice Village , who has more selection books than anywhere else in the city – and knows what’s in every one of them! Call before heading over (713) 529-6515 . The home is in the Champions Forest area of northwest Houston.
This is a fairly large powder room with a sloped ceiling, as it is situated under the stairs. You can see a bit of the ceiling at the top of the photo. The room also had this odd recessed niche with “columns” on either side, and a door leading to a closet. In addition, there were tons of the rounded / bull-nosed edges that have been common in new homes in the last 10 years or so. These are tricky to wrap wallpaper around, and equally difficult to trim wallpaper to the edge. Here is the niche area done, with wallpaper wrapped around the columns, and cut neatly along the horizontal bull nosed edge above the entry. Wrapping the wallpaper around this edge and onto the ceiling of the niche would have made the area way too busy and claustrophobic. Because these edges are never perfectly straight and level, it’s also quite likely that the wallpaper will go crooked, and you’ll end up with gaps or overlaps at the seams. A better option is to paint that ceiling area. I suggested the murky green color that’s in the leaves on the wallpaper pattern. Here’s the east wall of the room. The vanity and sink are at the bottom right.Here it is finished. In this case, the fir-down underside was only about a foot deep, so less chance of the wallpaper going crooked, so I did wrap it around the rounded edge and underneath. Still, one of the wallpaper strips did twist askew, and there was a small gap at one seam. With this pattern, no biggie – I just cut out a leaf and pasted it over the gap.I told you the room had crazy angles!Note that in papering angled areas like this, you can match the pattern in some places, but there will be mis-matches in others, such as where the sloped ceiling meets the fir-down. This wild pattern is perfect for disguising any mis-matches!Rolling the paper out on the floor, to get an idea of the pattern’s layout . Closer look at the lemons and leaves . And angles . It looks like a Picasso painting, don’t you think? The homeowner wanted something wild and fun , to set off the white minimalism in the rest of the home . The pattern is called Citrus and is by A Street Prints . It’s a nice non-woven material , doesn’t expand , and can be hung by the paste the wall method , although I opted to paste the paper , as I usually do. Non-wovens are designed to strip off the wall easily and in one piece, with no / minimal damage to the wall when you redecorate . They’re usually a pleasure to install . They’re more stain resistant and more able to withstand humidity than many traditional wallpapers . The home of this busy young family is in the West University area of Houston .
My strip is ending less than 2″ from the door molding on the right. Only problem is, the wallpaper and the door are not perfectly parallel to one another, so you have a wider space at the top and a narrower space at the bottom. Once that final narrow strip of wallpaper goes in place, the white “boxes” will be wider at the top and skinnier at the bottom, making the wall look crooked. To fool the eye and make everything look straight, I’ve cut a strip wide enough to cover the space. I’ve trimmed it with my straightedge and made sure all the boxes are the same width. Next I took a scissors and cut along the blue stripe, following the slightly wavy profile. Here I’m butting the strip into the corner at the right. It’s hanging perfectly parallel to the molding. The navy stripe overlaps the strip on the existing strip. It’s covering up a little more of the white boxes and making them narrower, especially at the bottom of the wall. But this is less noticeable than if I had let the boxes get cut diagonally on the right against the door molding. See how nice that looks, to have the boxes straight along the woodwork? And you don’t notice that the boxes to the left get consecutively narrower toward the bottom. Closer up. The camera angle is making the boxes look smaller at the bottom … trust me, they are all the same width. The angles don’t match up absolutely perfectly as you move down the wall, but it’s not anything to catch your eye. The wavy lines and irregularity of the design make this a good pattern to pull little tricks like this. The wallpaper pattern is called Feather and is by Serena & Lily , one of my preferred brands.
Most work in the Houston area shutters at midnight. I was delighted that I was able to squeeze in this one accent wall, for a baby girl who is to arrive soon.
Top pic shows the room in its original all gray state. The walls were textured, so I troweled on a layer of skim-coat to smooth them. In the second picture you see my three fans (plus the ceiling fan and the home’s A/C system cranking away), working to dry the smoothing compound.
I killed a whole Texas Highways magazine while it was drying. Once dry, I sanded the wall smooth, vacuumed up dust, wiped dust off the wall with a damp sponge, and primed.
This wallpaper was a non-woven material, and could be hung via the paste-the-wall method. I usually prefer to past the paper, for many reasons, but in the case of a simple accent wall like this (and because it was easier than lugging my 7′ long work table and trestles up the curved staircase), pasting the wall was a better option.
Once the strips are cut, I roll them up backwards and secure with an elastic hairband. See photo. This helps get rid of the “memory” of the paper, so it does not want to stay tightly curled up. It also keeps the front of the paper away from the paste on the wall, which helps keep everything clean during installation.
The walls in this room (in the whole house, the husband tells me) are pretty darned off-plumb. I used a few tricks and kept the pattern straight along the ceiling line. But, since I started by hanging my strips true to plumb, by the time the paper reached the corners and the adjoining un-plumb walls, there was no way to avoid the pattern being uneven from ceiling to floor. Kinda hard to see in the photo, but there is about 3/4″ difference in width from top to bottom.
Luckily, once you stand back, that crookedness is not all that noticeable.
Although the paper is mildly pink, the muted color and more sophisticated geometric design don’t scream “baby’s room.” This is a look that will grow with the little girl into her teen years.
This wallpaper pattern is by Engblad & Co., a Scandinavian company, and was bought from my favorite source for good quality, product knowledge, expert service, and competitive price – Dorota Hartwig at Southwestern Paint on Bissonnet near Kirby. (713) 520-6262 or dorotasouthwestern@hotmail.com. She is great at helping you find just the perfect paper! Discuss your project and make an appointment before heading over to see her.
The home is in the Oak Forest neighborhood of Houston.
One common mistake that homeowners make when ordering custom-sized murals is that they will meticulously measure their wall to the 1/2 inch, and order the mural that size.
What they are supposed to do is to add 2″ of “bleed” to each side – a total of 4″ to each dimension.
This extra paper allows for trimming at the ceiling and baseboard (see photo), and it allows some wiggle room to accommodate crooked or unplumb walls and unlevel floors and ceilings.
In the top picture, out of sight to the right is a walk-in wine room. The homeowner has loved this pattern for years, and finally found a place to put it – right adjacent to the wine room!
The wine case pattern is by Brunschwig and Fils. Unlike the other papers by B&F that I have hung, this one is a vinyl, with a slightly embossed surface (the lines between the boxes are slightly indented). It has a selvedge edge that had to be trimmed off by hand. Unlike most hand-trimmed papers, this one had no trim guide marks, so I had to wing it on where to place my straightedge.
The paper backing soaked up paste quickly, and each strip was nearly dried out by the end of the booking time, so I ended up rolling a little paste on the wall where the seams would fall, to augment. Once it was on the wall, the paper adhered nicely.
The floor was unlevel, and so the paper ran crooked along top of it, making it look like the bottom row of boxes was running downhill. To level out this bottom line, I used my straightedge and a razor blade to cut off the bottom “boards” along the black line. I trimmed the strip to 1/2″ high. See 4th photo. I used a piece of artist’s chalk to color the cut edge, so white would not show along the top.
Then I appliquéd the strip over the bottom of the paper on the wall, butting it up against the baseboard. Wallpaper paste won’t stick to vinyl (it’s too slick), so I used special adhesive on the area of the overlap.
In the bottom photo, you can see how nice and even the bottom line looks.
The interior designer for this job is Stacie Cokinos, of Cokinos Design. The home is in the Woodland Heights neighborhood of Houston.
This powder room in a newish townhome in the Rice Military area of Houston was originally papered in a darkish jungle/ethnic/animal-themed wallpaper. It was a good look, but the new homeowners wanted something brighter and fresher. Plus, the original paper had been hung over the textured walls, and the bumps were showing through.
It would have taken me two long days to strip the original paper, smooth the walls, and hang the paper. So the homeowner tackled the removal of the original paper (following instructions on my blog (see page on the right side) plus info she found on the internet), which saved her the price of a day’s labor. It also made my job a bit easier.
But this job still required a lot of prep, which took a lot of time. The homeowners were out of town (they let me into the house via remote access), and it was nice because I could work in peace and quiet, and I could stay as late as I needed.
I skimmed on smoothing compound, waited while it dried, sanded smooth, wiped off the dust, primed, and then finally hung the paper.
The pedestal sink was tricky to get around, as they always are. And the bull-nosed / rounded edges of two outside corners in the room were a challenge. Additional hurdles were crooked walls, un-plumb walls, and a ridged non-woven wallpaper material that would not bend or yield to crooked, un-plumb walls. 🙂 The pattern itself was a bit forgiving of these imperfections, and I used a few tricks to make things look straight and true.
This wallpaper design is quite popular, and I have hung it a bunch of times. It is called “Woods,” and is by Cole & Son, a British company. It is printed on a non-woven substrate, and is designed to be a paste-the-wall installation – but I find that paste-the-paper is a superior method.
Best of all, the homeowner loved what the pattern and light color did for the room. The powder room is instantly brightened, and the images of tree trunks give the room a whole lot of dimension and draw you in, as if you were actually walking in a forest.
The strong diagonal repetitiveness of the tree branches usually bothers me a bit. But in this room, with each wall holding only two or three strips, the pattern is dispersed nicely and the diagonal effect is minimized. So, what you see is the forest, and not so much the trees. 🙂
It was bought from my favorite source for good quality, product knowledge, expert service, and competitive price – Dorota Hartwig at Southwestern Paint on Bissonnet near Kirby. (713) 520-6262 or dorotasouthwestern@hotmail.com. She is great at helping you find just the perfect paper! Discuss your project and make an appointment before heading over to see her.
Regarding the previous post about the world map … with murals, it’s always important to measure carefully before ordering. Some maps are custom made to fit your specific wall, and some come in a set size. In both cases, it’s best to have the paperhanger measure the space and tell you what to order.
When the mural is custom-sized to fit your wall, it’s imperative to add an extra 2″ to EACH SIDE of the map. This means that you will have an extra 4″ of both width and height. This will allow for trimming at the ceiling and floor and opposite ends, as well as accommodate crooked walls and unlevel floors and ceiliings.
In the case of this world map, the product came in one set size. Turns out the mural was half a foot or so taller than the wall. Good. That allows a little extra for trimming at the ceiling and floor.
But the width came out to be exactly the same as the width of the wall. Sounds perfect, huh? NOT! Because when I butted the mural up against the door frame on the right, that gave a nice, tight fit – but since that frame was not perfectly plumb, by the time the 12′ of mural reached the opposite wall, it had gone cattywhompus, and that resulted in a crooked gap at the left side. See first photo.
In addition, the ceiling was way off level. That meant that ceiling line sloped downwards and “ate up” some of the print at the top of the mural.
If I had had that extra 2″ of “bleed” area all around each side, I could have hung the map a bit off-plumb, so that the print would have lined up with the un-level ceiling. And I would have had enough to meet both the right side of the wall and the left side.
But none of that happened, so here’s what I did. I butted the mural up against the door frame on the right side of the wall. That left a gap when I got to the left side of the wall. See first photo. So I took some of the paper that was trimmed off at the floor, found some blue water that was the same color as the part of the map on the left side, and fit it in to that narrow 1/2″ gap. The pattern doesn’t match perfectly – but you don’t notice it. And it is the part of the wall that will be behind the door.
In the photos you can see that there is part of the map that extends over the tops of the doors on either side (only the right hand side and door are shown). This area extends further into the wall than the door frame molding that the mural was butted up against. This left another gap, this time about 1″ wide, over each door.
Again, I was able to take some scraps that had been trimmed off and find a piece with color and design that “kind of” blended in, and I patched those in in the 1″ gap over the doors. Again, the pattern doesn’t match perfectly, but the color and the themes do, and over the doors, no one is going to notice.
One final trick … Remember I said that the ceiling was not level, and so it was chopping off some elements at the top of the wall? Those were letters that spelled “ARTIC OCEAN.” As the mural moved across the room, and as the ceiling moved along with it, we had three-quarters of an “A” on the left, and only an eighth of an “N” on the right. (Note: If I had had enough extra height, I could have pulled the entire mural up high enough that all those letters would have been cut off. Another reason to consult the installer before ordering a mural. 🙂 )
Anyway, the eye wants to see uniformity, not letters getting smaller as you move across the room. So what I did was, I decided that those words really weren’t important at the top of the wall – especially because the corresponding letters spelling “SOUTHERN OCEAN” had been cut off at the bottom of the wall, and also because the letters were so thin and unimportant that no one was going to see them way at the top of the wall, anyway.
But if someone did look up there, he wouldn’t want to see the name of the ocean getting progressively smaller. So I took some scrap paper that matched in color, and cut small patches, and then glued these over the letters “A,” “R,” “T,” “I,”… and so on, to cover them up. I used a special adhesive that would stick to the glossy map surface.
Once they were gone from view, and the gap at the left edge filled in, no one will be able to see anything crooked on this world map!
Bottom line: Have the paperhanger measure BEFORE you order the mural.
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