Basket Weave Wallpaper Pattern on a Bedroom Accent Wall

For this accent / feature wall of Grandma’s bedroom in a very contemporary new home in the West U. area of Houston, the homeowner wanted something fun but not too edgy (Grandma’s gonna sleep in there, after all! 🙂 ). Plus she wanted to pull in colors from other rooms, particularly navy blue, as well as coordinate with the tufted headboard (grey) and upholstered bench (navy). And a little Asian flavor wouldn’t hurt.

Here’s a pattern that fills the bill! The hatch design is reminiscent of a woven bamboo mat. The navy background coordinates with the bench, as well as fabrics in other rooms of the house, and the grey and silver accents work perfectly with the tufted headboard. The design is contemporary, but not overwhelmingly so. Its surface is vinyl, but it has a velvet-like feel, and I believe it will help absorb sound, too.

The homeowner took my recommendation and visited Dorota (read below), who helped her track down this perfect fit!

The material is non-woven, and I hung it using the paste-the-wall technique. The backing and edges of this dark paper were white, so I ran a chalk pastel crayon along them to disguise the light color.

This wallpaper pattern is by Designer Wallpapers, 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.

Most of the furniture and accessories are from High Fashion Home near downtown Houston.

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Modern Master Bedroom – Accent Wall

This large master bedroom in a new home near the West U neighborhood of Houston looked might snazzy decked out with its furniture and accessories from High Fashion Home. Yet it pretty much looked like a showroom – lacking warmth and individuality. Wallpaper on just one accent wall changed all that!

This fun design is unusual because it’s horizontal rather than the more typical vertical. It is by Designer Wallpapers. It is a thick and fairly stiff non-woven material, and could be hung by the paste-the-wall or the paste-the-material methods. In this room, I used a little of both. (The paper behaved better when pasted, but when going around the windows, to avoid getting paste on them, I pasted the wall.)

This wallpaper 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.

Pineapples in a Powder Room, Revisited

If this room looks familiar – it should… This week I’m working in a home in the Meyerland area of Houston where I hung paper after the home was repaired following flooding during the Tax Day Flood in April 2015. This home was flooded again during 2017’s Hurricane Harvey. The homeowners wanted everything exactly the way it had been before the flood.

This paper went in the powder room. The pineapple is the universal symbol for hospitality, which is fitting for this household, because the homeowners are friendly, down-to-earth, and welcoming.

This pattern melds nicely with the faux grasscloth that went in the entry (see previous post), both in color and appearance. The background of this paper looks like grasscloth, but it is not. It is a printed paper, with a very slightly raised ink texture. It is a wonderful alternative to the real stuff, and has none of the color variation or visible seam issues of real grasscloth – and it will hold up to the occasional water splash, too.

The chair rail will be painted and attached soon. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that the workmen don’t mess up the new wallpaper in the process.

This wallpaper pattern is by Designer Wallpapers, 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.

Wonder Faux Grasscloth Finishes off a Flood House Rebuild

If this room looks familiar – it should… This week I’m working in a home in the Meyerland area of Houston where I hung paper after the home was repaired following flooding during the Tax Day Flood in April 2015. This home was flooded again during 2017’s Hurricane Harvey. The homeowners wanted everything exactly the way it had been before the flood.

This paper went on one wall in the entry.

I LOVE this product! I HATE real grasscloth (read my page to the right, and do a search here to learn more), so when people even breathe the word, I steer them to this instead. This is a printed paper product, so it has a pattern that that can be matched, so you will not have the abrupt visible seams that come with real grasscloth. The color is uniform, so no worries about the disagreeable shading and paneling (color variations) that are rife with the natural grasscloth products.

And the manufacturer has attached vertical strings, which add a natural element and a textured effect that people are craving these days. It’s reasonably priced, too.

This wallpaper pattern is by Wallquest, in their EcoChic line, 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.

Transforming a Stark Hallway

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This young couple in the Garden Oaks neighborhood of Houston has a beautifully updated and furnished 1940 ranch style home. But they wanted to up the volume, so to speak, and thought that this hallway, which slices through the center of the home, would make a fine focal point.

I’ve hung this classic damask pattern twice before, and was carrying around a sample of it when I visited them for an initial consultation. They liked it immediately, and, after considering several other patterns, decided on the damask.

To make the area really special, they added a chair rail and crown molding.

It’s hard to get a good shot of a long, narrow hallway. But you can see how the color and pattern adds warmth and dimension to the space, and the lightly pearlized shimmer of the paper definitely adds a touch of understated glamor.

Since the chair rail was a main feature of the room, I positioned the pattern so that the bottom of the damask motif landed just above the chair rail. Likewise, the top of the motif sits just below the crown molding. This looks a lot better than having part of the design chopped off in mid-motif.

This wallpaper is by Designer Wallpapers, and was delightful to work with. It was bought at below retail price from 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.

In fact, the couple is going to meet with Dorota tomorrow, to choose a complimentary paint color for the bottom portion of the walls.

Who Thought A Black Bathroom Was A Good Idea? Here’s Better …

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This large powder room in a brand new townhome in between Montrose and the Heights (Houst0n) was originally painted black.  It was just too intense.  The interior designer knew that, while still keeping the dark color scheme the homeowners wanted, a little pattern would make the room less foreboding and more inviting.

I skim-floated the walls to smooth them (2nd photo), primed, then hung the paper.  OK, the 3rd photo is dark (not much light in the room + crummy camera), but if you look closely, you can see the pattern.  The other photos show the design nicely.  It’s large in scale, and that’s good, because the walls are nearly 10′ high, so the pattern fills the space nicely.

The interior designer for the job is Pamela O’Brien assisted by Danna Smith, of Pamela Hope Designs.  Their interiors are lovely, clean-lined, yet still warm and liveable.  The wallpaper is by Designer Wallpapers, and was a delight to work with.

The Kids Are Out Of College Now – Think It’s Time For New Wallpaper?!

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O.K. – when the daughter is working in the White House, and the son is taking the bar exam – it’s time to update the wallpaper! 🙂

When I first saw this wallpaper pattern, I thought it was too wild and crazy for the room. But after it started covering the walls, I admitted that those two kids have a wonderful eye. The large scale, the two-tone color scheme, and the singular motif theme all work together with the room’s white tile, black trim accents on the tile, new black granite countertops, and choppy wall space.

This paper is by Designer Wallpapers, and is similar to a very popular, but very expensive, black & white over-scaled floral on a black background by another manufacturer. I like my client’s choice better, because it covers the wall space better. (The pricey version has lots of black space and then lots of big blobs of white flowers, and to me, looks very “blob here, blob there.”)

I hung this in a Jack & Jill bathroom in West University Place (Houston). The wallpaper pattern is by Designer Wallpaper, pattern #AV 50000, and was lovely to work with. It was bought at below retail price from 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.

Jungle View With Vaulted Ceilings

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The ceiling of this home office on the third floor of a newish home in the Rice University / Museum District of Houston has some interesting angles and spaces. But there is no window in the room. The homeowner thought the space was stark and claustrophobic. So she came up with the idea to open up the space with a verdant foliage pattern.

The palm leaf paper went on the two large angled spaces over where the desk / computer will sit. Then a companion paper was chosen for the two smaller angled areas flanking the desk area.

I love using two coordinating papers in one space. And the green leaves really do open up the space, and bring a bit of the outdoors in.

Angled spaces like this eat up a lot of paper, so plan for a lot of waste.

Both these wallpaper patterns are by Designer Wallpapers, and were bought at below retail price from 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.

Have a Seat! – Cute Chairs in a Small Bathroom

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Whimsical, beachy, colorful, and fun! This hall bathroom in the West University area was originally painted a very, very dark blue. What a difference this light-hearted chair pattern in peaches and aquas on a shimmery off-white background made!

The wallpaper was nice to work with. It is a paper product and laid flat and tight to the wall. is by Designer Wallpapers, and was bought at a discounted price from Dorota Hartwig at Southwestern Paint on Bissonnet near Kirby. (713) 520-6262 or dorotasouthwestern@hotmail.com. Discuss your project and make an appointment before heading over to see her.

Coordinating Companion Papers in a Powder Room

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These homeowners had their painters strip off the old (dark red) wallpaper, and were eager to get the new wallpaper up in time for their annual Christmas Eve party. Even though I am booked up with work through most of March, I had an unexpected opening, and was able to get their paper up today.

It was a little nip-and-tuck, though, because they had ordered their paper without first consulting a paperhanger, and, as commonly happens, they ordered too little. 😦 So, they had to pay mega bucks to get the necessary double roll shipped via 2nd Day Air, smack in the middle of the holiday shipping season. Happily, it got here 12 hours before the install day, and I was able to pick it up from the wallpaper store, to save the client the trip into town. We were also lucky that it was the same run number.

The painters had done a good enough job stripping off the old paper, and originally, I thought all that I would have to do would be to prime the walls. But once I got to scrutinizing the walls, particularly the corners and edges, I knew that the walls could be in better shape. So I skim-floated and sanded just about everything, creating a very smooth, homogenous surface for the new wallpaper. All this added about three hours to my workday, plus some dust from sanding (which I vacuumed and wiped up).

The job would have looked good enough if I had hung the paper on the painters’ “prepped” walls. But I was glad that I had taken the extra time and labor to smooth the walls and ceiling, because the finished job looked fantastic, with no uneven areas or bumps showing under the paper, nor any areas raising questions regarding adhesion.

I am not usually a fan of wallpaper on the ceiling, especially when it’s a dark paper. But in small powder rooms, it can be very appealing – some designers call this sort of treatment in a small room a “jewel box.”

The two wallpaper patterns are by Designer Wallpapers, which is by Seabrook Wallpaper. They are in the same colorway, and are designed to work together, as coordinating, or companion, patterns.

The murky brown, fuzzily striped pattern went on the ceiling. A coordinating brown, hazy pattern went on the walls, and it featured a foggy medallion in a traditional motif. The finished room, with the dark vanity, dark granite countertop, and oil-rubbed bronze light fixtures, looked fantastic. To me, it looked like something out of a 14th Century castle.

Unfortunately, all of these elements don’t show up on the photos (Man, is it difficult to get photographs of tiny rooms!!) But you get the idea. And, I can tell you – this finished powder room looks fantastic.

AND … it will be ready to receive guests at the homeowners’ party on Christmas Eve.

I hung this wallpaper in a powder room in Barker’s Landing, near I-10 / Memorial and Hwy 6, in west Houston. (Interestingly enough, I had done another job, in a dining room, in this same subdivision, just a few months ago.) It is by Designer Wallpapers, which is made by Seabrook, and was unusually nice to work with. Pattern numbers are FR61205 and FR61405. It was bought at a discounted price from Dorota Hartwig at Southwestern Paint on Bissonnet near Kirby. (713) 520-6262 or dorotasouthwestern@hotmail.com. Discuss your project and make an appointment before heading over to see her.