Muddy, Moody Accent Wall for Guest Bedroom

The homeowners of this 1936 bungalow in the Eastwood neighborhood of Houston are artists and maximalists , and their home home is filled with lots of funky , colorful , and unexpected items. This poor bedroom needed something to help it fit in with the rest of the house .

Solution! This shot pretty much depicts the correct colors in this wallpaper pattern .

the colors are actually darker and murkier than this.

Mysterious looking flowers and foliage , and deep , rich jewel-tone colors .

This wallpaper is called Opia and is by House of Hackney . Hackney makes lovely non-woven / paste-the-wall goods, along with innovative patterns , many of which are sort of murals . I like this brand a lot , for fun patterns and also for excellent quality , durability , ease of installation , ease of removal , and affordable price .
Each of their ” rolls ” contains four panels , which are meant to be hung in sequence , left to right . Put together, the four panels measure about 6′ wide by 10.5′ high . If you have 8′ ceilings , yes, you will be throwing away 2.5′ of length for each strip . Likewise, for the space over a door , which is usually about 1′ – 2′ high, you will use a full 10.5′ strip, throwing away up to 9′ of it .
It’s important to know this when calculating how much to purchase , because if you figure by square footage, you’re gonna come up way short. You’ve got to count how many panels you will need. Or, better yet – let the installer calculate how much to buy .

Purple Finger

I have no idea what’s going on here, but it happens from time to time. I had been rolling on wallpaper primer in two rooms for a few hours . I’m suspecting I held a tool in a certain way for a long time , or somehow blocked circulation to a part of this finger . It doesn’t hurt , but it is a little swollen.
The color got darker and lighter during the rest of the day. I did some shopping on the way home, and the store was cold , and that seemed to exacerbate the issue – finger got cold and numb and really purple . Back at home in my nice warm home office , it’s still discolored , but not as much.

Pepping Up Plain Old Vanilla

Everything else in this newish townhome in the far northwest area of Houston is generic beige.

But the homeowner envisioned something much more bold and fun for the large powder room.

The slope at the top left is the area under the stairs.

Close-up. At the far right you can see a seam … the paper was slightly shaded darker on the left edge and lighter on the right edge, resulting in this. It looks like the seam is curled up, but actually it’s perfectly flat.

The pattern is called Marigold and it’s sold by Anthropologie. The manufacturer is York, and it’s in their SureStrip line, which is one of my favorites. This is a pre-pasted material, and you activate the paste by wetting the back. The instructions suggest using a squirt bottle – ouch! Can you say wrist pain?! I sprinkle water on with a sponge and then roll it around with a paint roller. I also add a little extra wallpaper paste to the mix.

Disappointed With Brunschwig & Fils Quality

Brunschwig & Fils is a high-end brand. One double-roll bolt cost this homeowner over $400 (and she needed 8 DRs for this room).

I encountered a number of issues with their wallpaper today.

For starters, the edges were jagged. See first and second photos.

Sometimes, a quick scrubbing with a toothbrush, or a light once-over with a sanding block, will get rid of this. But this time, as you can see in the top photo, the edges of the paper have actually been dug into and shredded. This makes for a bad looking seam. I had to discard this bolt.

In the third photo, look closely and you will see that the ink on the strip to the right is darker, and the stripes in the motifs are closer together, than on the strip to the left. This seems minor, but once up on the wall, the strip on the right will show as an overall darker cast.

I had to sort through the eight bolts and divide them between the three walls, ensuring that those that were the most similar went on the same wall.

A Few Small Issues With Schumacher Silk

Whoops! Someone at the factory got fingerprints on the wallpaper. 😦 Luckily, this was in the first foot or so of material, so I was able to cut it off and discard it without losing too much.

In the second photo, look just to the right of the pencil and you will see a band of darker colored material. Maybe the rollers at the factory pressed a little harder in this area – who knows?

This is part of the manufacturing process, and it’s part and parcel with natural materials like this silk. It is not considered a defect.

This silk was 36″ wide, and the strips I needed were 29″ wide. So I was able to trim off this darker band and use the part that was more homogeneous in color.

If I had needed the full 36″ widths, there would have been faint darker horizontal bands running the full height of each strip. Again, not a defect; just the nature of the beast.

The manufacturer is Schumacher.

A Really Nice Textured Faux Grasscloth

I’m not a fan of grasscloth (read the page to the right), but there are wonderful alternatives – this product is about my favorite. The layers of string on the surface provide the texture that is so popular today, while the printed pattern mimics real grasscloth. Because the design is printed, it can be matched from strip to strip, so you don’t see the abrupt breaks between panels as you do with real grasscloth. It also has a bit of a protective coating, so it is more durable than the real stuff, too.

My only complaint is that this darker colorway tends to have some shading / paneling issues. In the fourth photo, you can see that the strip on the left is darker than the strip on the right. This happened on every strip, every bolt of paper, and some were worse than others; I had to discard two strips because of this. Interestingly enough, I have hung the lighter tan version of this material and did not have the shading issues.

I hung this in the hall bathroom of a home in the Meyerland area of Houston, that had been damaged by the flood from Hurricane Harvey in 2017. The house is a veritable temple to Mid-Century Modern, and the homeowner wanted the wallpaper to be era-appropriate to the style of the home.

This wallpaper pattern is by Wallquest, in their EcoChic line, and is in the Grass Effects book. 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.