The homeowner wanted the look of grasscloth, but didn’t want the stains that can happen when splashed with water or toiletries. Another displeasing feature of real grasscloth is the very visible seams , and the likelihood of color differences between panels (called paneling or shading ). So she opted for this textured vinyl version. She loves the look. It is a handsome room!Original 1990’s paper has been stripped off, Roman Pro 977 Ultra Prime wallpaper primer has been applied, and we’re now ready for paper!This material has a pattern that matches from strip to strip, so you don’t get the eye-jarring look of broken fibers at the seams , like with real grasscloth or other natural materials. Here’s a close-up, detailing the texture. About ¼ from the right is a seam – it’s barely noticeable . Opposite wall. For balance, I plotted that the seams fall at the same point on each wall – 18” from the mirror frameI’m getting ready to hang a strip that will knock against that mirror frame. To keep paste from slopping onto the molding , I’ve applied this thin, flexible blue plastic tape along the edge. This will keep paste off the molding while I trim that strip to fit against the molding. Once that trimming is done, I’ll remove the blue tape and then smooth the wallpaper back into place.Since this is a dark wallpaper, I worry about the light colored primer peeking out at the seams. This can happen because sometimes the factory hasn’t trimmed the edges perfectly straight , or the wall may have uneven areas or bows , or some papers shrink a tad when they dry . So here I’ve plotted where the seams will fall and have striped the area with diluted paint .I use bottles of craft paint from the hobby store (good old Texas Art Supply !), and apply with a scrap of sponge . And my trusty Gatorade bottle cap with water, to dip the sponge into to dilute the paint … you don’t want full strength paint under there. Wallpaper wants to adhere to a primer made for wallpaper – not paint designed to color Christmas ornaments. Another and probably more important trick is to color the edges of the wallpaper. This navy blue wallpaper was printed on a white stock / substrate , and it’s highly likely that the edges of that substrate will show at the seams . So, again back to Texas Art Supply (or a good hobby store) for chalk or pastel , which I run lightly along the edge from the back so as not to get any color onto the surface of the wallpaper . That little dark nub you see is my chalk… the stuff breaks easily. It’s important that you not get oil pastels or use any kind of ink marker, as these will leech into the wallpaper and stain it, leaving you with a nasty dark line down the seam . I really liked this product. It was flexible enough to wrap around a rounded / bull-nosed corner , but stiff enough to not warp . It’s on a non-woven substrate , which contains polyester , which makes it less likely to shrink . This stuff is also designed to strip off the wall easily and in one piece with no damage to your wall when you redecorate . Another advantage of non-wovens is that they can be pasted and hung immediately, with no booking or wait time. Although I generally prefer to paste the paper , you also have the option to paste the wall with this material. The non-woven backing won’t be sucking up humidity like the paper backings used years ago (or in modern lower-end products), so greatly reduced chance of seams coming loose if your teenager spends an hour steaming up the bathroom . The vinyl surface means that it will be resistant to stains from water , toothpaste , and little (and big!) hands . In addition, I liked that the material has a realistic grasscloth look, and a realistic texture , as well as a pattern that could be matched, which helps disguise the seams. I didn’t match the pattern in the corners, though, to avoid having the horizontal bands running around every wall of the room at the same height. Looks better to break it up a bit. Also gave me more flexibility in placement of seams. The brand is A Street Prints and is in their Scott Living line (as in the Scott Brothers of HGTV fame). The home is in the Champions Forest area of Houston . installer paperhanger
Arrrgh. Another boring all-white room. So much warmth and character – with a modern edge – added by wallpaper on just this one wall . I do think that this pattern on all four walls would have been a bit ‘enclosed’ feeling. So a single accent wall – which is visible from the entry – is the perfect choice.There is a definite Art Deco / 1930’s vibe to this pattern .The room has other gold features (plant stands, mirrors), so the metallic look of this pattern pulls all that together . The metallic areas are shiny , so it’s important that I spent the first day here smoothing the textured walls , because that texture would show under the new paper and look bad. This paper arrives nicely rolled up , with no creases in the inner part of the roll / bolt , and every inch was useable . Compare this to the problems and wasted material I’ve had with Rifle Paper recently – do a Search to read previous posts . The pattern is called Beau Gatsby and is by Graham & Brown , a company I like a lot. This is a non-woven material and is designed to strip off the wall easily and with no damage when you redecorate. Many of their NW papers are soft and flexible , but this one was rather crisp and stiff , which is a little more difficult to work with. I usually prefer to paste the paper , which makes it more supple . But today I decided to paste the wall , which is a fast and clean way to install wallpaper. The home is in the Timbergrove area of the Heights neighborhood in Houston .
This is the bottom of the strip , where it meets the wainscoting . It needs to be pushed into the right-angle between the wall and the molding, so the excess can be trimmed off. No matter how gently I push, or what tool I use, or how carefully I approach this, some papers buckle and fold and crease as they are bent backwards into the corner . The wallpapers that do this are typically the thicker and ” puffy ” non-woven / paste the wall materials. It happens in just about every right-angle corner. Luckily these areas are usually not in the line of sight, so not very noticeable. Note that many non-wovens are thinner and more flexible , and do not present this behavior.
Pretty birds , nicely spaced branches , and lovely colors for this master bedroom in the Heights neighborhood of Houston . This accent / headboard wall is even prettier from a distance . Here’s the wall before. The other three walls are painted a complementary grey .From a distance. I’ve got one more strip to hang , on the far right. Close up . The background is silver with a little gloss to it, but not so much as to be glitzy or garish . I mean, a guy sleeps here, too. So it’s gotta be a bit subdued . This wallpaper is made by Graham & Brown. G&B is a good quality , mid-price range company. Like most of their papers, this is a non-woven / paste the wall material . Much of G&B’s paper is thin and flexible . But this particular pattern came on a thick and stiff substrate . N-W’s contain a minimum 20% polyester content, and I suspect this has a higher percentage . The stuff is somewhat akin to fiberglass . Look closely at the bottom of the photo, and you can see the fibers . This makes it good, and easy for DIY ‘ers , on simple installations like accent walls / feature walls . But it can be trickier when you have to trim around obstacles like windows , decorative moldings , vanities , toilets , and the like. Non-woven wallpapers are designed to strip off the wall easily and in one piece when it’s time to redecorate , with minimal or no damage to your wall (assuming proper prep was done before installation ). A much better choice than peel & stick .
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 .
Wallpaper comes in tight rolls. Often, when you cut a strip off the roll, it wants to remain curled up, as you see here. Some types of non-woven material are really bad about this. Even with weights on it, it’s hard to keep this stuff flat enough to get paste on the back. And when you do, it’ll often curl up again and get paste on the surface of the wallpaper . So I’ll take the bolt of paper and carefully roll it backward , securing it with an elastic hairband from the dollar store. This was a several-day job, so I let the rolls sit over night. But often all you need is a few minutes to eliminate what we call ” memory ” – the desire for paper to stay rolled up. Look at how nice and flat and flexible this example has become. Note: rolling backward can damage the material, particularly some non-wovens that are what I call “puffy” and thick. Folding these backwards can cause the fibers to crease – which doesn’t look good on the wall! So it’s important to roll the material around a form for support, such as an unopened bolt of wallpaper. And to roll carefully and slowly as you go. Once the paper is completely re-wound and the hairband secured, you can carefully remove the support. Still, with some types of N-W, you may still end up with creases.
” Floating ” accent wall between kitchen and dining room . The homeowners originally considered a mural for this area . But with help from the wallpaper sales guy, they landed on this. Both husband and wife love this. The black color plays beautifully off the black cabinets in the kitchen , butler’s pantry , and mud room . The gold geometric lines keep everything lively . The specs say this is is a 25″ pattern repeat. But from looking at it, you’d think it was much shorter … the narrow lines match up with the narrow lines, and the fat sections line up with fat sections. Maybe 4″ repeat. But – not. I’ve hung this before, so I was already aware that those lines and sections are not all the same distance apart. It’s essential that you lay your strips next to each other and make sure you’ve got the pattern match correct. Because if not, you could end up with tiny 1/8″ mis-matches across the seams between some of those gold lines . This is a Jaclyn Smith design by Trend . It’s a paste-the-wall / non-woven material , and is strong and durable , and resistant to stains and tears . Flexible and easy to install . Will strip off the wall easily and in one piece when you redecorate . It has a raised ink / lightly textured surface . The wallpaper was purchased from Calico / Calico Corners on W. Alabama in Houston , with the expert knowledge and interior design assistance of Ron Dillon , whom I’ve known for about 25 years . The home is in the Woodland Heights neighborhood of Houston.
There were eight double roll bolts of this wallpaper , to cover a large powder room in Houston. Four were rolled so the pattern came off the top of the roll, and four were rolled the opposite way, with the bottom coming off first. This Katie Kime brand is custom-printed , so you can assume that all these rolls are from the same run , or batch . But maybe not - why are some forward and some backward ? Possibly the company substituted some returned goods, or some old stock they had sitting around the warehouse, for half of this order. I didn't want to risk putting strips of slightly different shades on the same wall. So I had to carefully plot the room so I used the "forward" rolls on some walls, and the "backward" rolls on the others. This does eat up additional paper , so good thing I always have the homeowner purchase a little extra. Also note the crease in the roll on the right. There were a few other creases in other rolls.
I have no idea what happened to the font in the section above, nor do I know how to get it back to the original. All I know is that I HATE this “New Editor” that WordPress foisted on us a few years ago. Perfectly HORRIBLE. And their Customer Service doesn’t care. Anyway … moving on … Note the horizontal smudge next to the top of the capitol. Since this Austin Toile pattern has a 25″ pattern repeat, discarding this piece ate up minimum of 2′ of material (x 24″ width = 4 square feet) and potentially more, to get the correct pattern match. Usually this brand prints on a nice non-woven / paste the wall substrate. But, like other manufacturers, Katie Kime has had supply issues obtaining raw materials . During the height of the Pandemic , they resorted to printing on some positively awful stuff. Extremely heavy , thick , un- pliable , stretched to the extent that the pattern wouldn’t match properly, and more. One was completely un-hangable and had to be sent back. I can’t find all my posts re those challenges, but here is one: https://wallpaperlady.wordpress.com/2021/07/21/katie-kime-tough-install-today-draft-messed-up-delete/ But they’ve since gone back to printing on their usual stock, and I’ve not had problems lately. So when I first picked up this box of 8 double roll bolts, I was surprised at the weight of it. Also the paper had a shiny surface and was obviously composed of vinyl . I couldn’t tell if the substrate was non-woven or paper . I feared they had gone back to printing on that bad material , or perhaps were using up what they had in the back of the warehouse . There were no instructions included, nor any information at all – not even a brand name! Although I could find instructions on-line, you can’t be sure these are current and applicable to the rolls in the box. KK has amazingly good customer service , and you can usually get intelligent answers via phone or on-line chat … but my call to them went to voice mail , and then we got disconnected, so I gave up. After hanging the first few strips, I figured out that this was a flexible vinyl on a non-woven substrate, so that part was good. However, the thickness of the material interfered with getting good, tight, flat seams , as you can see somewhat in the photo. The seams aren’t horrible, but a better non-woven without the vinyl usually produces almost invisible seams. The surface was shinier than usual. Shiny tends to show every imperfection in the wall underneath. Here the thickness was a bit of a help, as it helped cushion any slight dips or pimples on the wall. There was also an odd orange discoloration about 1.5″ long on the edge of one strip. Very faint, but I could see it, and sometimes these things end up catching your eye. I also worry that it might be some substance that will bleed into the paper and cause a larger stain over time. Of course, this popped up after I had hung a very difficult piece in a tight spot, and then hung the subsequent strip. In other words – no way was I taking it off the wall and re-doing. I cut out a design motif and pasted it over the area. Another thing I was unhappy with has happened a number of times with KK paper. The pattern will match perfectly at the top of the wall, but begin to slide up or down, creating a mis-match , as you move down the wall. I think that a lot of it has to do with the vinyl material, because it’s stretchy. The weight of the paste and the vinyl will cause the bottom section of the strip to sag. This simply doesn’t make sense, though, because, if the paper is going to absorb moisture from the paste and expand (which many papers do), each strip should do so at the same rate, right? But not. I finally deduced, correctly or not, that the pattern gets distorted as it’s wound into a roll. So my theory is that if you take your 10′ strips from the same position in each roll, the pattern should match. In other words, take a 10′ strip from the top of roll #1. Take your next strip from a brand new roll #2. Third strip from roll #3. Obviously, this leaves a whole lot of unused paper. For shorter areas like over doors, where it’s harder to see, and where you can fudge the pattern a bit, I used the paper from the insides of the rolls, again, roll #1 next to roll #2, etc. But this doesn’t work on every instance, so you’re gonna be stuck with many areas where the pattern doesn’t match perfectly across the seams. The solution is to match the pattern at eye-level , and then allow it to go off as it moves toward the ceiling and floor. There were other issues with this paper that were disappointing to me. But not overwhelmingly awful. Most homeowners would not notice. But I sure hope that this was a one-time issue, and Katie Kime will go back to its former good-quality, non-woven material.
Before. I’ve skim-floated the textured wall , sanded it smooth , wiped off the residual dust , and then primed with Roman Pro 977 Ultra Prime wallpaper primer . Now we’re ready for wallpaper !Done! Just a bit of texture , and a little neutral color to add some warmth to this large , mostly-grey , master bedroom . Oh – and some subtle sparkle . See following photos . It looks like real grasscloth . But it’s a faux! To help these homeowners avoid the disappointing color variations and low durability of real grasscloth , I encouraged them to consider textured vinyl products that recreate the look and texture of the real stuff , but without the drawbacks. Please click and read my link to info about grasscloth on the right of this page. Real grasscloth , and the fauxes , as well, have visible seams (very minimal issue with the fauxes). So it’s important to balance the strips , so you have equal widths of panels as you traverse the wall. In other words, you don’t want five 36″ wide strips and then one 20″ wide strip. And you’ll want to center those strips on the wall. Position them so you have an equal number of equally-sized strips on both the right and left sides of the wall. Another design concept is to not have a seam fall down the center of a wall. Rather, it just feels better aesthetically to have the strip straddle the center line . Here I’m hanging my first strip, having already calculated where the center of the wall is, the center of the wallpaper panel is, measured over to where the seam should fall, and then placed the red line of my laser level so it will guide where I should butt the edge of the wallpaper against. That’s my Bosch laser level gizmo sitting on the top of the headboard, shooting its red light beam onto the wall. Another shot. I’m using the vertical light beam ; the horizontal beam is not relevant in this install . This textured vinyl material does a pretty darned good job of recreating the look and feel of real grasscloth . This photo is from about 6′ away.A closer look. Note the bit of silver shimmer in the background , that adds a luxe look to the overall effect .The wallcovering is by York , one of my preferred brands . It’s on a non-woven backing , which has many advantages over traditional paper-papers. It’s breathable , stain-resistant , will strip off the wall easily and in one piece with minimal / no damage to the wall when it’s time to redecorate . It can be hung by the paste-the-wall method (which is what I did today) or the paste the paper technique (which I use most of the time). I felt that the seams laid down better and had less ” rebound ” edge curl from factory trimming than many of the heavier vinyl faux non-woven backed materials I’ve worked with. In other words, I liked this product pretty much! this particular material was also thin and flexible , so it was easy to work with and manipulate if needed. The home is in the Spring Branch area of Houston.
Before – living room in Spring Branch ( Houston ). I’m in the process of priming the backs of these bookshelves , so the wallpaper will adhere to the semi-gloss enamel paint . Done. Simple , subtle , but makes a statement . The shelves will be replaced, and decorative items will be set on them. Close-up . A light black background with beautiful glimmering gold trees and branches. The pattern is dispersed evenly across the paper, making for a homogeneous look. Called Luminous Branches , this wallpaper is made by York . It’s a thin , flexible non-woven material . I hung it easily by pasting the wall , rather than by pasting the paper . When it’s time to redecorate , it will strip off the wall easily and with no damage to the wall surface . Nice stuff!
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