“Les Touches” (touch/dots/blots) is a decades-loved pattern by Brunschwig & Fils, a French company.
It has movement, but, having only two soft colors, is subdued. Thus it works nicely on one accent wall. Or, as in this young girl’s bedroom, on all the walls.
I hung this wallpaper in the Tanglewood / Galleria neighborhood of Houston.
Note that the hour-glass striped pattern is hard to see if you are only looking at a strip of wallpaper on your table. Before hanging, it is important to look up the pattern on-line or in a selection book, to see what the overall design and secondary pattern will look like when played out across a wide wall.
This wallpaper pattern by Thibaut has a viny hourglass stripe design. These sorts of designs look best when centered over a focal point in the room. The problem becomes – WHERE is the center of the design?
In the photo, I have laid out two rolls of paper on the floor so I can see the full pattern repeat, both vertical and horizontal.
I’ve placed 3′ long yardsticks along the outer edges of the design, which are long enough to span a full pattern repeat.
With these in place, I can use a shorter ruler to find the mid-point between them. This will tell me where the center is (at the tip of my pencil), in between the two colored vines on the paper.
However, these vines are not printed in the center of the strip of wallpaper.
So, after finding the midpoint between the two vines, I have to calculate where it sits relative to the edge of the wallpaper.
Keep in mind that this point will land a different distance from the left edge of the wallpaper than it does from the right edge.
Next, I need to find the center of the focal point on the wall. And then determine where the right or left edge of the wallpaper strip should be placed, so that the center of the paper falls at the center of the wall.
You have just read the condensed version.
The full version also includes things like:
`width of strip and how it will land on the wall relative to where seams will fall
`expansion of paper and movement of pattern after wet paste hits the paper
`if the pattern is actually symmetrical as it is placed on the strip.
`if the pattern is not symmetrical (which this example is not – meaning that the vertical lines are not mirror images of each other), where is the best place to find a midpoint, so it will appear symmetrical when placed on the wall
`if elements on the wall are symmetrical. In this case, the light fixture was placed off-center on the mirror. So – do you center the wallpaper design on the light fixture (a dominant element) or on the mirror (a more significant element in relation to the wall).
`lots more
I invested an hour and a half finding the center point of the pattern at its narrow point, the center of the pattern at its widest point, the median of these two mid-points, the distance the median fell from either edge of the wallpaper, then the center point of the mirror, of the light fixture, factoring in 1/2″ expected expansion, and which was more dominant – the light fixture or the mirror.
In the end, I decided to center the pattern on the mirror. This meant that as the pattern fell vertically down either side of the mirror, it was fairly uniformly placed.
This was good.
But what I didn’t like is that this meant the vines over the top of the light fixture didn’t straddle it exactly perfectly. They landed in the center of the mirror, but not in the center of the light fixture.
I shouldn’t have stressed over any of this, though. Because, despite all my rolling out and careful measuring and plotting, it turns out that the viney pattern is neither symmetrical nor mirror-image.
So, no matter how I placed it on the wall, it was never going to straddle a center-placed plumb line evenly.
That’s not to say that my hour and a half plotting time was wasted.
The design still looks a lot better as I placed it – relatively centered on the mirror and light fixture, as compared to if it had just been thrown up without regard to either.
Bottom line – the homeowners don’t notice little nuances of a swoopy vine off-center by 3/4″ of an inch or so… at least not on a wild swirly pattern like this.
They’re looking at huge flowers, comic birds, bold color, and wild, daring designs.
When all is said and done, the bathroom looks fabulous.
This bedroom went from typical traditional suburban style to much more contemporary and fun, thanks to this line-drawing pattern with a playful take on potted flowers.
Just the headboard wall was papered, creating a focal accent for the room.
By Exclusive Wallcoverings, this is a non-woven product, and can be hung either by pasting the paper or by pasting the wall. Since there were no intricate cuts to make or obstacles to trim around, it worked nicely to paste the wall.
Non-woven papers tend to want to retain their curled-up state, which makes them difficult to work with. To get rid of that “memory,” and to prevent the decorative side from bopping into the paste on the wall, I roll the paper backwards and secure with a hairband, as you see in the photo. Once I’m up on the ladder, I undo the paper and let it unroll toward the floor, working it into position against the preceding strip as it goes.
This home is in the Kingwood neighborhood of Houston.
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