World Map Mural – Focus on Africa

This couple in a beautifully updated 1939 home (4-plex converted to single family) in the Montrose neighborhood of Houston loves Africa and has traveled there several times. This spare bedroom on the first floor is devoted to Africa. On the walls they have hanging artifacts from their travels.

And now they have a map of the continent , front and center!
accent wall

Close up looks like old paper that has been folded and stashed and aged , then uncovered and now placed on the wall.

The mural is custom-sized to the wall. Remember to add 3″ to both width and height, to accommodate trimming and also wonky walls.
The material comes as one big roll , with six panels all in one long piece. You have to unroll the whole thing and cut the panels apart . Note that five panels are 19″ wide. But that sixth one on the far right is only 16″ wide. I have cut off the 3″ overage. So when you’re plotting your lay-out, don’t go assuming that you will have six panels of the same width. That last panel is going to be whatever it needs to be, to custom-fit the size of the wall.
Here, I’m laying the panels out to compare dimensions of width and length with those of the wall . Also checking to be sure the sequence of panels is correct. Note the diagram provided by the company on the white sheet of paper at the top of the photo.

Here’s a close-up of the diagram / install instruction sheet .

The mural is by Rebel Walls , a part of Gimmersta . I love their hundreds of selections, their material , quality , and excellent customer service.

This particular mural is called World Map . I’m not sure, but it may come in other colors .

Here’s the mock-up the company sent. The homeowner requested that Africa be placed in the center . You see what a good job Rebel Walls did with that. The mural that we received was actually a little smaller, and didn’t contain that much of America on the left, nor the far right sides of the countries on the right.
Interestingly, the mural doesn’t meet up with itself. In other words, you can’t place two murals side-by-side. Look at the left, where America is. There’s only the eastern half of America. But there is no connecting western half of America on the right side of the mural. So you couldn’t order several of these and place them next to each other, to go around a bedroom , for instance. This may be because the mural was designed to fit one wall only , and to focus on Africa . It’s possible that the same mural is available so that it will connect to itself, and so that you could use it all the way around a room.

According to the shipping box, Rebel Walls is also connected with Sandberg , another manufacturer of fine wallpapers . This stuff comes from Sweden . It is a non-woven material and can be hung using the paste the wall method . I often prefer to paste the paper , but on this simple accent wall, I did paste the wall . Saves space, because I don’t have to set up my big table .
Non-woven wallpapers don’t expand when wet with paste like traditional papers do, which is a nice advantage for many reasons. They also are durable and stain-resistant . And are also designed to strip off the wall easily and in one piece, and with no damage to your wall when you redecorate .  Non-woven is MUCH better than the false-hopes peel & stick material being pushed by some mfgrs today. Click my link to the right.

Rebel Walls also includes special paste for this non-woven paper. This is important, because some other types of paste have been known to stain N-W’s, also called blushing – paper looks wet in areas, but never dries out .
It’s believed that excess moisture is a reason for this staining / blushing . Which is the main reason why I don’t used the paste provided by RW. If the powdered substance has to be mixed with water to turn into paste , it stands to reason that it can be too liquidy and could bleed through the surface of the wallpaper, causing staining.
I prefer a pre-mixed paste made by Roman called 780 . You can also use Roman 838 . These both have lower moisture contents, and have good record of not staining wallpapers . Most Sherwin-Williams stores carry these pastes. But call first!

Overscaled Tropical Mural Works Like Wallpaper

What an ultra-cool pattern ! And jungle foliage is a popular concept right now. This one really fills the space! What’s cool is that this accent wall is covered in a mural , rather than a traditional wallpaper pattern with repeating motifs .
But it’s being used like a wallpaper, by placing it on all four walls of this room .
This is in a new book by York , which is one of my favorite brands. It comes in a set of six panels.
I didn’t get to check if it’s a set size or if it can be custom-sized to fit different height walls. But it does continue from one mural to the next, meaning that you can place murals next to each other and have the pattern continue around the room.
Dorota at the Sherwin-Williams on University in the Rice Village has this product. (713) 529-6515
wallpaper installer houston

Soft Animal / Mural Map for Big Boy’s Room

To make room for a new baby, little Henry is moving from the nursery to this room. So the the grown-up furniture, the frou-frou chandelier, and the pink wallpaper have to go!

He was very excited to see the new accent wall, covered with a map showing fun places to visit and the animals that inhabit them.
The muted colors meld beautifully with the décor in the rest of the house.

North America. Henry knows the names of many of the animals on the map.

Europe

Exotic lands, exotic animals.

The mural pattern is called Animal World . The color is Mint .

Rebel Walls is one of my favorite mural manufacturers for typical use. Their budget-friendly products can be custom-sized to fit your particular wall / room . They print on a lovely non-woven stock, which is durable and will strip off the wall easily and with minimal damage to the wall when you want to redecorate. It can be hung by pasting the paper or by pasting the wall . Today, I chose to paste the wall .
The home is in the Tanglewood area of Houston .
rebelwalls.com

Logistics for Hanging Jungle Wallpaper Mural in Nursery

Let’s do some engineering so we can get this mural on the wall. The wall is a few inches less than 12′ wide, and 9′ high.
The mural comes as a set of four panels, and the total width of the mural is 6′ wide x 9′ high.
Therefore we need two 4-panel sets to span this wall.

Here is the first set of four panels, pasted and hung. A really tricky thing with murals is that the strips / panels you place next to your first set need to match up with the existing pattern. Meaning, the panels need to be able to be hung consecutively next to each other and have the pattern continue uninterrupted.
Not all murals are designed to continue from one to the next. Some will only fit a wall of certain dimensions.
Still others are custom made to fit specific sizes … but that’s a topic for another blog post.

You’re looking at two sets of mock-ups of the mural, side-by-side. The dotted lines show each individual panel.
Toward the center, you see where Panel 4 of the mural on the right meets up with Panel 1 of the mural placed on the right. You can see that the trees and other elements from the mural on the left match up with the motifs on the mural to the right. This is good! It means that we can place murals next to each other to cover a wider wall space.

Here is the finished wall with two murals placed next to each other, with the trees and animals continuing from one mural to the next.

Second issue: The wall height between crown molding and baseboard was exactly 9′ high. The mural came exactly 9′ high. This might sound perfect – but it ain’t agonna work.
The wallpaper / mural needs to be a few inches (preferably 3″-4″) taller than the wall itself. (Same goes for width) This little bit of wiggle room allows you to trim at the top and bottom of the wall. And it allows for walls that are not perfectly plumb and floors and ceilings that are not perfectly level.
In this case, it wasn’t going to be possible to get the mural to fit inside that 9′ high space across a 12′ wide wall without going off-track a bit. We needed about 2″ of extra height at BOTH top and bottom.
Well, you can’t make the wallpaper mural any taller, so we opted to make the wall shorter. The builder added an extra tall baseboard along the bottom of just this one wall.

This reduced the wall height by about 3″, which gave us just enough extra paper length to split between the ceiling and baseboard. A little will be trimmed off at the ceiling line, and a little off the bottom / baseboard.

If you look at the picture of the finished wall, the 4th photo, you’ll see that there are more “important” design elements at the bottom of the mural than at the top. The manufacturer does this on purpose, because they know that some of the mural will need to be cut off, in order to accommodate different wall heights, and for trimming at the ceiling and baseboard. Nearly a foot can be trimmed off the top of this mural without losing anything like an animal or a tree top.
The same is not true about the bottom, though. As you can see in this photo, the designer has let elements run all the way down to the bottom of the mural … leaves, plant stems, and, as in the photo above, a bird’s feet.
I tried to raise the strips up as high as possible, to avoid cutting off his feet. But I had to leave enough to accommodate trimming and wonky walls. So, as you see in the photo, the poor guy got his feet cut off.
Still, all this is happening at the bottom of the wall, and no one is really paying attention to this area. Plus, there will be furniture in front.
Still, all worth noting.

Jungle Wallpaper Mural is by Lulu and Georgia and is in the Sure Strip line made by York .
Some take-aways from this post that I hope you will keep in mind …
~Never order a mural to the exact dimensions of the wall. Add 4″ to height & width
~Consult with the paperhanger before ordering any material
~Rather than a mural that comes in one set size as this one does, consider a custom-sized mural that can be made to fit your specific wall. I like rebelwalls.com among others.

Creating Wallpaper To Cover An Area That Was Not Planned For

When I first consulted with this family about wallpapering one wall in the master bedroom closet, the homeowner didn’t tell me that she also wanted an 11″ wide outside corner (sort of like a column) papered. No pic of that, sorry.
The mural to be used, shown above, was custom-sized to fit the main wall, so there wasn’t enough to cover this 11″ wide column.

But because the door and mirror covered up so much of mural, I figured I could use these unused areas to cover that column.

Here I’ve taken a scrap of the white sky area and applied it to the top of the column.

Now I’ve taken a section of the tree area that I liked the pattern of, and hung it on the lower 2/3 of the column.

Since I was making do with salvaged scraps, I had to take what was available. The top portion of this scrap is cut off, because it was used in the mirror / door area of the room. The straight cut doesn’t look so great.

So I used a scissors to cut along the design, creating a more natural edge of tree tops.

Overlaying this on top of the straight cut white sky area would result in a horizontal ridge under the paper. It would hardly be noticeable, but I could disguise it better. I used a pencil to mark the outline of the edges of the tree tops and then cut around it with a scissors. I made sure to leave about 1/2″ so the bottom printed tree paper would overlap on top of the sky area.

Here it is put back in place. Now the ridge follows the contours of the top edge, and is less noticeable.

Pretty Floral Mural for 1-Year Old’s Nursery Accent Wall

In anticipation of this accent wall mural, the parents had the three other walls painted a soft salmon-y pink.

Finished! I love the way the pattern ” crescendos ” toward the center and top…. perfect for cradling the crib.
The blotchy look will disappear as the wallpaper dries, and the background will become more bright white.
The mural came a set size, of 12.5′ W x 9′ H. The width fit the wall with just a few inches extra, which was perfect. But the wall was less than 8′ high and the mural was 9′, so we lost about 12″ of the mural. I brought the design as close to the ceiling as I could, while still preserving that light blue flower at the center top. This meant that most of the pattern lost was from the bottom, which has more stems and flowers – but not as pretty as the elements toward the top. And most of the bottom is going to be hidden by the crib and other furnishings, anyway.
Also note that the right side of the mural pattern does not match up with the pattern on the left. Meaning, the mural does not continue from one mural to the next. This means that, if you have a really wide wall, for instance, or a powder room more than 12′ wide, you cannot place two or more murals next to each other and have the pattern continue uninterrupted.
This is pretty standard for Anewall murals. But there are tons of other mural manufacturers who do make products that will accommodate wider spaces. And that are also custom-sized to your rooms’ specific dimensions.

Close-up looks like a translucent watercolor painting.
The pattern is called Wildflower .

Cute hidden creatures like this snail.

On her own, the mom originally purchased a peel & stick mural. Once she contacted me, I set her straight on how … err … awful that stuff is. (Click the link on the right to read my page about this material.)
The company allowed her to send the P&S back and exchange it for this better quality pre-pasted option, which I like a lot. (I’m not fond of their traditional which is vinyl and requires special install techniques).
Still, we had some issues which I’ve come to expect from Anewall, such as gaps and overlaps at the seams, and some minor pattern mis-matches at the seams .
This is a newish home in the League City area of Houston.

Dark Flowing Floral Mural on Bellaire Bedroom Accent Wall

Headboard wall skim-floated smooth and primed – ready for wallpaper.

Having the foliage hang from the ceiling means you see more of it as the leaves and blossoms fall and fold around the bed. Moody and brooding colors make this perfect for a master bedroom.

It looks like it was painted on canvas or burlap, or possibly like you are looking through a window screen out onto a dark forest.

There are some very expensive versions of ” upside down over-scaled dark floral ” patterns. rebelwalls.com makes it affordable for any budget, and with a DIY friendly, easy-to-install non-woven paste-the-wall material. Murals are custom-sized to your wall(s), which is more tricky than it sounds, so be sure the paperhanger calculates dimensions before you order.
Rebel Walls sells mostly murals, but they also sell traditional rolled goods, too. They can even create custom-made designs.
The home is in the Bellaire area of Houston.

A Few Wallpaper Mural Logistics

This company, RebelWalls , provides its custom-sized murals in several strips, all rolled up into one big bolt. Here I have cut them apart and off the bolt and arranged them in the order they will be hung on the wall. Always make sure to check the pattern match and sequence before you start hanging!
The strips are all the same width, about 20 1/4″ wide. Since most walls are not an exact multiple of 20.25″, that last strip will come as a narrower width. In the photo, I am cutting a 3″ wide strip off of the 20.25″ wide stock material.

Here is that narrow space on the wall where I will need to fit in that last 3″ wide piece.

Bold Pattern Toned Down a Bit, Mural in Nursery

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 placement

Manufacturer 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!

Clipper Ships / Battle Ships Mural

Nursery wall smoothed, primed, and ready for wallpaper

Battling ships fill the wall space with dramatic action

The action continues to the left of the door

More battle action on the opposite wall

Close up

Detail

Manufacturer 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.