Tropical Foliage Re-Do – Peel & Stick Debacle UnDone

Re my previous post about an under-the-stairs powder room that the homeowners attempted to install an argumentative peel & stick material … here is the finished room after I stripped off the P&S, smoothed the walls, and hung the new wallpaper choice. I engineered to place the sole philodendron leaf down the center of the ceiling.

Where the under-the-stairs ceiling met the area over the door, the two surfaces came together in a very sharp angle. It was difficult to get in there and work, and to get the paper tight into the joint. Fingers can be too fat, so this is where tools can squeeze in there and save the day. This is also my kill point . Do a search here on that term for more info. A long story and maybe an hour or more of work, but you will note that there are no pattern mis-matches here. The homeowners were out of town, so I felt unpressured and could take as long as I needed to make these three areas look seamless.

I love the hand-painted, water colory look of this pattern.

This photo shows the joint where the walls meet the sloped under-the-stairs ceiling. A wallpaper pattern will never match perfectly in these situations. At first, I tried a few tricks to ” fool the eye .” But I decided it looked crisper and less distracting to just trim the two papers where they met. Here, we had the advantage that the tropical foliage pattern was busy enough that, I mean, really, when you step three feet back, who’s gonna notice a minor pattern mis-match, anyway? The pattern does match in the corners on either side behind the toilet, though (see photo). Even though this only 4.5″ high, it does lend subtle continuity to the room.

When I see Candice Olson, I fast forward to glitz and glam and glitter and shimmer. Here her tropical foliage design is a bit more main stream. York is the mother company, and I love their products.

This home is in the Heights neighborhood of central Houston.

Wild Color & Pattern – Imperial Dragon

There’s nothing shy about this sunroom! The boldly-colored pattern with its swirling motifs would have been overwhelming on wide walls of full-height. But here, on just the area above the wainscoting and in between the windows, it’s the perfect punch of color and movement.

I love the way the curled dragon fits perfectly above the windows.

I engineered to place the dragon in the center between the two windows that look out onto the garden.

The homeowner had adjoining cabinetry color-matched at Sherwin-Williams to coordinate with the colors in the wallpaper.

The home is in the Montrose neighborhood of Houston. The wallpaper is “Imperial Dragon” by Thibaut, one of my favorite brands.

Matching the Pattern – Horizontally or Vertically?

See that funny jut-out near the top of the photo? That is the underside of a stair, cutting into the sloped ceiling of this powder room.

As I hung wallpaper around this room, at first I thought I would match the pattern of this 10″ high stair-area to the pattern on its left.

But then I realized that the vertical (striped) element of this design was pretty noticeable. And that it would look better if the stripes below the stair area lined up with the stripes on the stair area.

This caused a slight pattern mis-match in the corner to the left. But I think it looks much better to have the vertical foliage elements line up, as well as to maintain the sequence of birds and leaves.

Also, instead of matching the bird motif to the bird under the stair, (which no one would see), I chose to line up the bird figures so they would be continguous as you viewed them from standing-height as you entered the room.

As for the slight pattern mis-match to the left … I took a part of a bird that matched the design, and appliquéd it over the corner. Now all you see is a bird, and no one notices that a few leaves don’t match up perfectly.

Wallpaper jargon, and too complicated, I know. Just look and note that the pattern continues vertically from floor to ceiling. This didn’t just “happen.” It all was planned out and engineered.