Defects in Today’s Wallpaper

Yellow strip along right side of strip at top of photo. Grey strip just to the right of my pencil in the second photo.

Horizontal yellow stripe about center in this photo

Hard to see, but this photo shows “ghosting” of the print from the instruction sheet showing through the surface of the wallpaper. The instructions had been rolled up inside the paper. Somehow, the ink transferred onto the wallpaper. This ruined about 2′ of the bolt of wallpaper – multiplied by three bolts.

Edges splayed / curled up, probably due to a trimming glitch at the factory. In addition, several feet of this affected area had a darker color – which would have showed up as a stripe along one edge of the wallpaper.

This Candice Olson wallpaper is made by York. York is normally one of my favorite brands. But today was disappointing.

Once I discovered these printing and trimming defects, I contacted the homeowner. After kicking options around, she decided to NOT have the wallpaper hung. Why spend all that money for paper and labor, and have a less-than-stellar result?!

She will present these problems to the company. There is a good chance that she can avoid defects in the replacement paper, IF she gets them to send a different run.

Here is another reason why I am glad she purchased from a “real” wallpaper company (in this case, she bought from Burke Decor), instead of a middle-man company such as Wayfair, Etsy, Ebay, and even Amazon.

A wallpaper-focused company will be able to ferret out problems. And they will be knowledgeable of Run Numbers and etc. So the replacement they send will be free of printing and other types of defects.

This wallpaper is by York, in the Candice Olson line.