If you’re hanging wallpaper around a room with four walls and four corners , virtually always when that last strip of paper meets up with the first strip you hung some hours ago, you’ll have a mis-match of the pattern . That’s why we try to tuck this in an inconspicuous place like a 1′ high corner above or behind a door. But sometimes you don’t have a hidden corner , and all four corners are highly visible and run the full height of the wall. In these cases, it looks much better for the pattern to match floor to ceiling , as you see in this photo. But you have to put the kill point somewhere!In these cases, a more logical and less noticeable location for the mis-match is the shorter area over the door – where nobody is going to be spending much time looking at, anyway. My first strip is on the left, and the rest of the powder room has been papered, and I’m working my way from the right to meet up with that strip on the left. Here it is going into place. I’ve matched the pattern on this new strip to the strip on the left . The strip is too wide, and is overlapping the strip on the right. And, as expected, the pattern doesn’t match up on the right. As an aside, that blue plastic tape you see at the top of the strip of wallpaper is to keep paste off the ceiling. Once I’ve trimmed that excess paper off, I’ll remove the tape , and the ceiling will be nice and clean – no paste residue to wipe off or worry that it will be visible or damage the paint / cause flaking . Here I’ve trimmed that short strip at ceiling and above the door trim. As you can see, it’s overlapping the strip on the right, leaving a bump, and plus, the pattern doesn’t match . To be honest, with this busy pattern and this short area up over a door , this 1′ of mismatch isn’t going to be very noticeable. But I wanted to make it look better. I’m going to splice these two strips together. In the photo above, the left strip is overlapping the strip on the right. I don’t like the way the pattern is lining up. A splice will leave branches cut off, and will be noticeable.So here I’ve reversed things and have overlapped the strip on the right on top of the strip on the left . Now the pattern gives a better option for a splice . I like that there is a curved vertical tree trunk that I can cut along. This will help disguise the splice. So now to do the splice, I have push hard enough on my blade to cut through two strips of paper. But it’s important to not score the wall surface beneath. When the wallpaper paste dries and the paper shrinks a tad, it will put tension on the wall surface . If that underlying surface is not unstable or not sound, due to being cut into, or dust is another factor , that tension can cause the wall surface to pull apart , and the wallpaper can come away from the wall. Actually, it’s not the wallpaper coming away – it’s the layers of the wall pulling apart. So I use these thin flexible polystyrene plastic strips under where the splice will be. You can’t cut through them!Here I’ve pulled the two strips of wallpaper away from the wall and am positioning the plastic strip under where the splice will take place. Next, I’ll smooth the two wallpaper strips back into place, with the right one overlapping the one on the left.I like to hold a single edge razor blade in my fingers , but you can use a blade holder or trim knife , too. Here I’ve free-handed my cut , trimming along the vertical tree trunk at the top , then straight down through blank area, then through some branches, and finally at the bottom again trimming along a curved vertical tree branch. Now I’m removing the excess from the left side of the trim / splice . Lifting the strip on the right so I can remove the excess piece that was trimmed off on the right.Now removing the polystyrene strip. Using my plastic smoother to gently press the two trimmed strips of wallpaper into place. Here it is all done. Trimming along the vertical branch at the top has helped disguise the splice. The bottom area doesn’t match 100% perfectly, but I’m OK with that. I’ll work on smoothing out that teensy overlap and the seam will be nice and flat. All done! The wallpaper pattern is called Luminous Branches and is by York . It’s non-woven / paste the wall material , and very nice to work with, durable , stain resistant , and will strip off the wall easily and with no damage when you redecorate . If you’re interested in the source for the splicing / double cutting strips , or the thin blue tape to keep paste off the ceiling, please email me at wallpaperlady@att.net
aaHere’s what this flowing viny wallpaper pattern looks like in this dining room in the Garden Oaks / Oak Forest neighborhood of Houston . The bottom 1/3 of the wall is block paneling / wainscoting , so the wallpaper on just the area above is not overwhelming . A kill point is the place in a room where your last strip of wallpaper meets up with the first strip you hung . this virtually always results in a pattern mis-match . So we try to hide that in an inconspicuous place, such as in a corner behind a door . In this room, all of the corners are very visible . A mismatched corner of 7′ high would be very noticeable . So in this room, I was able to cleverly disguise the mis-match in a much shorter area, over a door . This is only 6″ high . Here my first strip is on the left, and my last strip is on the right, with two short strips needed to bridge that gap . Here the strip on the right has been put into place. Here’s the piece that will butt up against the strip on the left. Eeek! It’s 1/2″ too narrow to cover the gap. Also, as you can see, there is an obvious pattern mis-match at that seam on the right. look at this tree branch . I’m going to use that to my advantage.Here I’ve taken another piece and have matched the pattern on the right side. Note that it’s not matching on th left. Here I am, back to that strip we saw a few photos ago, that will match with the strip on the left. Remember tha tree branch I pointed out? Here I’ve trimmed the wallpaper vertically along that tree branch . Here I’m putting it into place, butting it up against the strip on the left, and overlapping the strip on the right. But that’s going to leave a vertical ridge under this strip, where the strip underneath it ends on the left. But you won’t notice that overlap if it runs under a design motif . Here I’m using a pencil to trace the outline of that tree branch, bringing it in so that the tree branch will overlap just 1/8″ – 1/4″ over the strip on the right. Note that since the surface of this paper is vinyl , and wallpaper paste doesn’t always adhere well to slick plastic , I’ve used a special border paste or vinyl over vinyl or seam repair adhesive just on this small 1/8″ overlapped area . Strip on the right trimmed to conform to the curves of the tree branch. Tree branch piece being put into place. Tree branch strip trimmed and finished. SDone and viewed from below. OK, so the pattern doesn’t match 100% perfectly the way the designer intended. Some of the motifs are closer together than they “should” be. From here, who the heck is going to notice?! This looks pretty darned good – and it looks way better than having a 7′ long mis-match in a very visible corner . The pattern is called Twining and is by Graham & Brown . It has a very light texture , and also a slight metallic sheen on the branches . It’s a non-woven / paste the wall material , and will strip off the wall easily and in one piece when it’s time to redecorate . I like their papers a lot . You can purchase G&B from Dorota at the Sherwin-Williams in the Rice Village . Call first, as hours vary. (713) 529-6515 . Here’s another cool thing … Go back to that first photo. Since I started hanging paper by centering the pattern between the two windows on the wall to the right (not visible in the photo), by the time I worked my way around to the wall between the windows you see in front of you, the pattern was not going to be centered in between the windows. I thought it would look better if it was balanced symmetrically. So I positioned the dominant part of the tree branches in between the windows. And then I used the same overlap-and-disguise trick over the window on the right.
A theory has been circulating for decades that a liner will disguise texture or imperfections in a wall. A liner is a special paper applied to the walls before the actual decorative wallpaper goes up. It has its purpose – but smoothing walls is not one of them. At least, not in my opinion.
Here you see an area where a pedestal sink has been removed. In so doing, part of the drywall was torn away (the reddish brown area) and the wall surface is left uneven. I’m using liner in this room for another reason. Here it has been applied over the damaged area. As you can see, the uneven texture of the wall shows right through (we say that it telegraphs ). Once the liner is good and dry, it will shrink and pull even tighter to the wall, and the ridges underneath will be even more visible. And once the wallpaper goes up, all this will telegraph through the new wallpaper, as well. Here’s the liner paper I used today. It’s a fairly thick, stiff, non-woven material, so has more ” bridging ” power than other types of liner paper. Still, as you see above, it’s not enough to smooth textured or uneven wall surfaces. The only way to properly and thoroughly smooth a textured wall, IMO , is to skim-float it and then sand it smooth, and then apply a wallpaper primer. Please do a Search here (upper right corner) to find previous posts on this process.
Well, dang it! Not all my pictures turned out, so you will have to use your imagination to visualize as I try to explain. This room had two long doorways that had only about 5″ above them where the wallpaper would go. In the photo above, look to the right and see this narrow space. It would take about four strips of wallpaper to get across that width of space. With the pattern match being about 2′, that would eat up about 8′ of wallpaper, with most of it going in the trash. It also would take a lot of time to hang those four strips, and create seams which always present the potential to come away from the wall at some point. This wild floral pattern allowed for some playing, so I decided to railroad the material (run it horizontally) over the doorways. This was quick and eliminated seams. Best of all, I could use some scrap wallpaper from the trash pile. In the photo I am using my straightedge and a razor blade to trim a strip that is just 3/4″ higher than the height of the wall space over the door. That extra 3/4″ will accommodate any irregularities in the height of the area, and will be trimmed off once the strip is in place. Here the strip has been installed over the doorway to the left. I butted it against the crown molding and then trimmed off that extra 3/4″ with a trim guide and razor blade. Because I cut this strip from a random scrap, and because I ran it horizontally, the flowers didn’t match the pattern on either wall – neither the wall on the left nor the wall on the right. No big deal. As I said, the pattern was forgiving and easy to disguise the mis-match. All I did was to cut around some of the flowers and leaves and then overlap them onto the paper on the wall. In the photo, in the top left corner, it’s the grey peony and the green leaves above and to the right of it, and also the green leaf under it. Trimming around the shape of the flowers looks so much better than making a straight cut.
Whoops! This wallpaper strip ended up too short. I suspect I forgot to add the 3″ extra for trimming at ceiling and floor. Sure would like to avoid replacing this whole strip. I could have spliced a piece in horizontally. But that would have left a (slightly) visible horizontal seam, as well as put stress on the wall if the razor blade scored the surface. So I opted to patch in a piece. To disguise the patch, I cut along the design, and discarded the bottom piece.Then I used scrap paper and cut along the same part of the design, making sure to leave a thin part of the design that would be overlapped (don’t want any gaps showing). This patch was placed under the piece on the wall, with the top piece overlapping from above (less noticeable when viewed from above … the direction of lighting also affects this). Once all pieces were smoothed into place, it’s intact and homogeneous, and, best of all – undetectable.
Too many elbows!Printed layer delaminated from backing.Design cut to size.Successfully disguised.
When you finish wallpapering a room, the kill point is where the last strip meets up with the first strip. The pattern virtually never matches, so we try to put it in an inconspicuous place, such as a corner behind a door.
The double arm of the tiger in the top photo wasn’t really a big deal, especially 9′ up and obscured by the jutting door molding. But it bugged me, and I couldn’t resist playing with it.
I figured I could cover it up with something else. I found some foliage from another part of the design that was big enough to cover the offending elbow and repetitive palm leaves.
This paper is a non-woven material, and is fairly thick. Simply slapping this on top of the existing paper would mean that the patch would stick out a bit.
So I delaminated the material, by carefully peeling the inked layer off the backing layer. Then I trimmed around the leaves.
Last photo … the patch is pasted and put in place, hiding the elbow and breaking up the repetitiveness of the palm leaves.
Look closely – VERY closely, and in the upper half of the photo, you’ll see a metal utility box that has been covered with wallpaper.
This is a box for a defunct and un-used security alarm system, about 18″ square. The homeowners tried to get the box off the wall – but, despite the use of various screwdriver bits and power tools, the box would not come off.
So they were going to be stuck with a grey metal blob in the middle of their beautiful wallpaper.
Well, I thought I could do something with it. I could make it fade into the background of the wallpaper pattern.
Wallpaper won’t stick to painted metal, because it’s glossy. So I took a bit of sandpaper to knock off the gloss, and my primer Roman’s 977 Ultra Prime and coated the service box.
Then I matched the wallpaper pattern to the paper already on the wall, and covered the box with corresponding wallpaper.
This is more tricky than it sounds, because the box is 5″ deep, which created discrepancies in the pattern match, depending on from which angle you are looking. I opted to keep the pattern matched at the corner junctions rather than matching it as it would be view from a distance on the wall. That all gets too complicated to try to explain here.
The box had been primed, so it provided a good base for the wallpaper paste to stick to. But on some areas, like the edges after an outside corner, I smeared on a bit of clear adhesive caulk, to be sure the paper would hold, even under conditions of stress such as wrapping around a corner.
This whole thing took me 45-60 minutes. I am pleased with the way it turned out. From the floor, you sure would never know there is a large box sticking out of the wall.
The exhaust fan in this powder room was very obvious, having been placed smack in the center of the rear wall.
Covering the flat surfaces with wallpaper helped disguise it.
Note: Some portions of the vent cover were curved, and did not lend themselves to being covered with wallpaper, especially since this particular product was thick and stiff.
The vent was plastic, and required a special primer that would stick to the plastic, as well as special paste that would adhere to both the paper and the plastic. (VOV – Vinyl Over Vinyl paste is formulated to do just that.)
When you wallpaper a room, you work your way around the room, until the last strip meets up with the first strip. This is usually placed in an inconspicuous corner or behind a door, because in this last corner, the pattern will not match.
This large powder room did not have any “inconspicuous” corners. Any mis-match of the pattern in a corner would be very obvious. So I chose to put this last mis-matched junction above the door. The wall area over the door was only 12″ high, which helped.
In the top photo, the first strip is on the left, and the last strip has come around from the right. The pattern motif that ended up in this spot just happens to be the same on both the left and the right strips. The problem is that there is a 1″ gap between the two strips.
To bridge this gap, and to disguise the resulting pattern mis-match, I took a scrap of paper that would match the pattern coming from the right side. (Note, this would not work coming from the other direction, because the koi fish would be harder to alter in a pleasing way.) I trimmed along the design in an irregular line. See second photo.
When I butted this against the existing strip to its left, the pattern matched at the seam. The irregular cuts that I made along the pattern meshed with the design on the strip to the right. It’s not a perfect match, but it’s enough to fool the eye, and from the floor, no one would notice. See the last photo.
And it’s a heck of a lot better than having the pattern down a whole 8′ corner not match.
The kill point is where the last strip you hang meets up with the first strip you hung. This virtually always ends up in a mis-match of the pattern’s design. This is usually in a corner, and the paperhanger will try to place it in an inconspicuous location (such as behind a door).
But not all corners are hidden behind a door. In such cases, and depending on the design, the pattern mis-match will be noticeable, even eye-jarring.
Sometimes it’s possible to get creative and hide that kill point where it will be less visible. That’s what I was able to do today.
The first photo shows you the Chinoiserie pattern, so you get an idea of what it looks like. In this room, because all four corners were very visible, I wanted to keep the pattern intact in the corners. So I needed somewhere else to hide the kill point.
The room had a spot where the molding around the door came very close (6″) to the wall-hung linen cabinet. This was a good option to place the kill point, because it would be only 6″ wide, vs. my other option, which was a corner that was 5′ high. I’ll take a 6″ mis-match over a 5′ mis-match any day!
By manipulating the wallpaper pattern a little, it was easy to disguise the kill point and the mis-matched pattern. It’s there, in the second photo – but I’ll bet you will have a hard time spotting it.
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