It’s nice when a manufacturer does this. Notice that all of the pattern motifs are contained within the width / borders of this strip of wallpaper. Nothing passes across the seam. There is nothing to match from strip to strip. Even if the walls are out of plumb , or the ceiling is not level , this allows me to keep the same design element at the same spot below the ceiling, all the way across the wall or around the room . See photo. All seven strips across this nursery accent wall have the design motifs at the same distance below the crown molding. Not having to connect a pattern motif to another across each seam means that I can pull each strip up to where I want it under the crown molding. No going off-track or sloping / tracking down or up. This cute pattern of pastel hot air balloons is by Caitlin Wilson and is in the Sure Strip line of pre-pasted , easy to install and easy to remove wallpaper s made by York . I like this material a lot.
A cozy nook. The homeowner likes to spend time here, soaking and relaxing. And recovering from supervising high school athletic activities ! This is a 1939 4-plex in the Montrose area of Houston that was beautifully renovated into a single-family home. So this entire master suite is carved out of what was originally one 1- bedroom apartment . Note my white 2′ x 4′ sheet of plywood over the claw-foot tub , so I can safely access the wall above. The wallpaper was placed on just one accent wall , above the tile wainscoting / chair rail . During the initial Sunday afternoon consultation , both the homeowners and I felt that this pattern on all the walls of this large master bathroom would be too overpowering . So they opted for just one accent wall . The design doesn’t have a strongly noticeable secondary or vertical pattern , but I still took the time to center the most dominant feature (the pomegranates) on the tub faucet . The faucet guy , tub guy , and tile guy didn’t get everything perfectly lined up – but nobody’s even noticing. What matters is that the finished nook looks fantastic! Also of note is that, in this near-100 year old home, the wall was bowed , and it wasn’t possible for the tile to lie flat against the entire surface. So there were some areas where the grout was 1/4″ wide, and some areas where the wall actually overshot the tile, leaving no visible grout at all. So at the area where the wallpaper met up with the top of the tile and the uneven grout line, I made a fat cut , to try to disguise the uneven line. Do a Search here to see previous posts on fat cuts . This wallpaper design is by William Morris , who was a strong force during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s , in the Art Nouveau and Arts & Crafts movements . His work is having a resurgence in popularity right now. Most are more symmetrical and repetitive than this example ( Google Strawberry Thief ) , but, true to the design aesthetic , all of them involve natural elements , such as plants , flowers , fruits , birds , and animals . In this close-up shot, you can see the raised ink of this print , which gives a slight textured feel . The manufacturer is Morris & Co. Usually M&C prints on a user-friendly non-woven material . But in the last year or two I’ve come across more and more M&C that are printed on the old-fashioned, traditional, what we call a British pulp substrate . Non-wovens are strong , durable , stain-resistant , humidity – resistant , easy to install , and easy to remove when you redecorate . Pulps , on the other hand , are just the opposite . Do a Search here to see my previous posts. None of this is a deal-breaker. The installer just needs to know what he’s getting into, before taking on the project. We hunted. This particular pattern was not available by any vendor in the NW material. Maybe it’s COVID , or supply chain issues , or maybe it’s a British thing (even though many American and Canadian companies are printing the Wm Morris designs ). Couldn’t find any outfit offering Fruit in non-woven. At any rate, the paper went up beautifully, and the basic paper material will hold up well, even if the homeowner steams up the room on her long tub soaks , and the pattern is lovely in the vintage home with new tile , tub , and faucet .
Before. Good colors. But nothing inspiring. Done. Boy, this paper really visually pushed the walls away and made the room look larger ! Easy on the eye tone-on-tone pattern , lighter colors , and a teeny bit of gold sparkle .
Note the 5/8″ high strip of wallpaper under the medicine cabinet on the left.
Because those faucet handles sit up so high above the backsplash , it’s likely that when people reach for the handles, water will get splashed onto the wallpaper . To prevent splashed water from wicking up under the wallpaper – which could cause the paper to expand and curl away from the wall – I ran a bead of clear siliconized caulk along the top of the backsplash . The color is skewed in this shot, but you get an idea of the tropical foliage and pattern scale . Toile is a French word for a sort of pen and ink drawing in one color on a background that may be colored or may not be.Close-up , showing a truer color . Note the palm trees and the monkey . This material has a woven -look textured surface , and it mimics fabric . I almost felt like I was install ing linen , instead of wallpaper . The brand is Rasch , a company out of Germany . Their papers are consistently nice to work with. This one was unexpectedly thin and flexible . It’s textured vinyl on a non-woven substrate . The vinyl makes it durable and stain-resistant , and the NW makes it easy to remove later when you’re ready to redecorate . The seams are positively invisible. This powder room on the first floor just off the home office / study comes complete with a shower . Just for fun – one of the obstacles in this room was this rain shower head – sticking out right where I need to be on my ladder , and keeping me from reaching those walls . On top of that, the faucet handles also stuck out much further from the wall than most do. While priming the walls, as I was climbing down from the ladder , my clothing actually got entangled in the handles and – turned on the water ! Yes, I got a shower at work today ! The home is in the Woodland Heights neighborhood of Houston .
Yesterday’s install was quite fun, but there were some unusual or challenging features to the room. Here are some of them. First, in most areas, the chair rail had a sort of gap between it and the wall, probably then filled in with caulk. I used some craft paint from Texas Art Supply to color that in, so there wouldn’t be white showing between the dark green paint and the black wallpaper. My usual trim guide (not pictured) is thin, designed to allow you to cut very close and tight to the edge. But in this case, I was afraid it might leave some of that gapped area showing between the paper and the wood trim. So I used this steel plate tool, which is thicker and would allow me to get a fat cut – just enough paper left to wrap a teeny bit onto that gap area. Note that before I trim, I’m going to press that edge into the corner. I couldn’t hold the camera and hold it in proper position at the same time. Also, you’ll notice the rolled edge at the top of the tool. That’s thicker, and allows for getting an even fatter cut, for instance, when you want just a tad of paper to wrap around a corner . Do a Search to see my previous post about this technique. Here I’ve made the trim cut and am peeling away the excess that was trimmed off at the bottom. See how the bottom edge of the wallpaper now wraps a tiny bit and fills the gap neatly?Next issue – wall height. On this wall, the height is 3′ + 30.5″But on the opposite wall, the height is 3′ + 29.75″. This means that you can expect the ceiling to move up or down, which means that a pattern motif – let’s say one of those cute chameleons – could get his head chopped off by the descending ceiling. Next issue – bowed wall. Here my yardstick is sitting pretty squarely against this wall, in a corner . But as I move it up the wall a little further – wow! – that wall takes a dip to the left. And it’s quite a dip! The wall has a bow in it. I can get my next strip of wallpaper to cover that space. But the fallout will be that pattern motifs will hit the wall at different points, which means that the next piece to be placed after that, the pattern will not match perfectly at all points. All right. So that previous corner had a bow. This one is out of plumb. Here you see my laser level showing that my wallpaper strip is hanging nice and plumb.But move the laser to the corner and you see that it’s out of plumb .Here’s a better example. Again, this causes the pattern to not match perfectly in the corners. Another shot of the bowed wall, which, for various tech reasons, due to Word Press ‘s crappy New Editor , this shot got out of order and I was not able to place it with the others under the topic. Papering around the electrical outlet , I had to unplug my light source. There was light coming in from the hall. But this paper, as well as the paint, were so dark that I couldn’t see well to work. Enter my Big Larry flashlight .Small enough to fit in my toolbox , but really bright and dependable for when you need it. The pattern is called Fantasy Tree and is by Breeze and was purchased through one of the showrooms in one of Houston’s decorative / design center s. It’s a nice non-woven material , easy to hang , easy to remove , durable and stain-resistant .
so-called peel and stick wallpaper is not nearly what the vendors’ websites make it out to be. It is neither easy to install , nor easy to remove . Nor does it hold up very long. I won’t hang it, neither will most of my colleagues across the country. Even our British counterparts have asked us to not let it slip across the pond! I won’t work with it, but one of the clients I visited yesterday did attempt to DIY try it on her own, with quite unsatisfactory results. She was kind enough to let me take photos . Here you can easily see wrinkles next to the door molding .gap at seam over door, warps along side door.hard to see, but there are large wrinkles. Plus notice on the right, paper is not adhering to the wall.seams shrink and gap.P&S material is not even trying to adhere to the wall.
A lot of these failures are due to the homeowners’ lack of knowledge and experience with peel & stick , and with wallpaper in general. For instance, the textured walls should have been smoothed / skim-coated / skim-floated before applying the material . Wallpaper wants to adhere to a smooth surface – not to the “highs and lows” of a textured wall . Next, most P&S instructions call for application on a semi-gloss paint , which needs to cure for 6-8 weeks. Also, read the fine print, and you’ll learn that P&S is meant as a temporary wallpaper …. you can plan on it starting to fail in less than a year. That’s where you get the failure to stick to the wall , and shrinking at the seams . Of course, here you can see that that happened within a few weeks / days. In this case, the material will be easily removable from the wall. But in most cases, if you’ve installed it on a smooth , primed wall, well, when stripped off, it will take the paint along with it. Leaving you with a nasty , pock-marked mess to have to repair. Click the link to my page on the right, about why to stay away from P&S.
he lure of (false!) claims of easy to install and easy to remove led these homeowners to purchase peel & stick ” wallcovering ” and try to install it themselves. It did not go well. The wall was coated with a gloss paint, as per manufacturer’s instructions. Yet, here you can see that it is not even trying to adhere to the wall. Many brands come in rectangles of a few square feet, rather than traditional strips that are long enough to reach floor to ceiling. These small rectangles are much harder to keep perfectly lined up, so you are very likely to end up with overlaps or gaps at the seams. It’s not pliable or malleable, so won’t readily be eased into corners or turns. Here, note wrinkles and warps in the corner in the center of the photo, and at the ceiling line in the center top of the photo. The wall was not smoothed before applying the paper, so you see unsightly texture. The roughness is also interfering with good adhesion, because the paper is only sticking to the tops of the bumps, instead to the entire surface. So much for easily removeable. As you can see, trying to take this stuff down – it took the paint along with it.
Hate the idea of removing old wallpaper? Well, many, many other people do, too. Manufacturers have responded by developing “non-woven” backings.
The best way I can describe these is to compare them to those white Vitek envelopes – you know, the ones you can’t tear? Some of these substrates are pretty thick, which I don’t care for much because they’re hard to manipulate in to tight corners or cut around intricate moldings, plus the seams tend to show. Some are very thin, though, like this brand.
The main attraction of these non-woven materials is that they won’t tear, and when it’s time to redecorate, each strip will (supposedly) pull off the wall easily in one piece.
They also don’t expand when wet with paste, nor shrink, so there are certain advantages during installation.
This manufacturer has gone a step further by making the wallpaper pre-pasted, which is a little easier for the DIY homeowner to hang.
Do NOT confuse these with the trendy but highly disappointing “peel & stick” so-called “removeable” papers. More on that on my page to the right.
If you’ve read this blog for long, or if you’ve read my informative page on grasscloth to the right, you know that I am not a fan of this material. So when clients want texture and an earthy, organic feel, I suggest some alternatives.
One of my favorite alternatives to real grasscloth is this textured vinyl product, called Bankun Raffia, made by Thibaut. It has none of the visible seams, shading, paneling, or color variations of the real stuff. What’s more, it is strong and durable, just about tear- and water-proof, and it is stain resistant.
The homeowner wisely chose this product to use as two panels flanking the fireplace wall (which is also the TV wall). The faux grasscloth adds warmth and texture and subtle color. It will hold up well against daily use, and it will be easy to remove when they are ready to redecorate.
This 1960 ranch style home in the Westbury neighborhood of Houston is like a time capsule of Mid Century Modern design. The doors, windows, moldings, cabinetry, and even most of the bathrooms are original – and in mint condition. The homeowners love the look, and wanted to honor that, while updating some of the rooms.
What fun! This wild pattern fills all those bills!
What’s extra cool is that the homeowners painted the walls and woodwork in the room a mauvy-purple color more than a year ago. I showed them a sample of this paper in the orange color (which I had hung in another client’s home in a nearby neighborhood, also Mid Century Modern), and they loved it. When they went to the wallpaper store (read below), the selection book showed this snazzy purple colorway. The shade of purple is the exact compliment to the paint colors they had chosen so long ago. BINGO!
This wallpaper pattern is by Graham & Brown, in their Super Fresco line, which is reasonably priced and easy to work with, as well as easy to remove when it’s time to redecorate. I hung it with the paste-the-wall method. 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.
Hate the idea of removing old wallpaper? Well, many, many other people do, too. Manufacturers have responded by developing “non-woven” backings.
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