Before. Primed and ready for wallpaper . Done. This image could be positioned so that the palm leaves push up from the floor , or, as in the photo , they hang down from the ceiling. This is a popular look right now, and very fitting to an accent / headboard wall in a bedroom . Done. The homeowner bought one mural from Russia before she and I consulted , so it would be difficult to get another. In addition, the mural images don’t continue from right to left, so you can’t place two murals next to each other and have palm leaves continue unbroken . The manufacturer’s picture on-line is misleading, too, because it’s been Photoshopped to look like it fills the whole wall with tropical fronds . As you can see, the actual mural is a lot narrower than the wall, plus shorter by about a foot and a half. The mural is placed slightly off-center on the wall , because the homeowner wanted it centered on the bed , which sits a little to the right of center . Plans are still incubating, but she’ll probably have wooden panels or trim placed on the wall flanking the mural as well as beneath it, to give a finished look. All in all, I think the room looks dreamy !Close-up .The material is vinyl and has a woven fabric – like texture . The mural came in four panels, each about 3′ wide by about 8.5′ high . Here I am laying them out so I can get measurements and to be sure they go up in the right sequence. There were a lot of these little black specks of a chalk – like substance on the back , and even some on one area of the front . Did I tell you this came from Russia ?! Sorry, no brand name, but this was thin and very flexible and pretty nice to work with . This is a popular design concept , and many companies are making similar patterns . Try RebelWalls.com , which is super quality and really good customer service, plus tons of designs and images to cover your walls .
Headboard wall skim-floated smooth and primed – ready for wallpaper. Having the foliage hang from the ceiling means you see more of it as the leaves and blossoms fall and fold around the bed. Moody and brooding colors make this perfect for a master bedroom. It looks like it was painted on canvas or burlap, or possibly like you are looking through a window screen out onto a dark forest. There are some very expensive versions of ” upside down over-scaled dark floral ” patterns. rebelwalls.com makes it affordable for any budget, and with a DIY friendly, easy-to-install non-woven paste-the-wall material. Murals are custom-sized to your wall(s), which is more tricky than it sounds, so be sure the paperhanger calculates dimensions before you order. Rebel Walls sells mostly murals, but they also sell traditional rolled goods, too. They can even create custom-made designs. The home is in the Bellaire area of Houston.
Master bedroom before. White. Boring. After. Warm, classic, and a touch of French. Much better suited to this 1920 home in the Houston Heights. Headboard wall.The pattern fits perfectly in the header space over the doors. The dark area in the upper corner will lighten as the wallpaper dries. Close-up.I was very pleased with the seams on this product. They went together nicely, with no gaps or overlaps. And I was doubly happy that the paper did not shrink much as it dried, so no white wall peeping out from gaping seams. I love the slight texture of this raised ink surface print wallpaper. I’m not usually a fan of the Schumacher brand, but this product’s install went very well.
Re my previous post, about centering the pattern on the fireplace wall … Once a wallpaper pattern has been positioned on the first wall, as subsequent strips are placed around the room, the pattern falls in its proper sequence. Meaning, you have no control over how the design will land on all the other walls.
In this room, I felt it was important for the design to be centered on the fireplace wall (see previous post). But the headboard wall was equally visually prominent, and it would sure look best if the scalloped design could be centered on this wall, too. But the way the wallpaper strips were following each other, the pattern would fall off-center when it hit this wall.
I thought I could make it look better. It took careful engineering, precise measurements, a laser level, some secret tricky techniques, and a whole lot of time (coupla hours). But I got the swoopy design centered behind the bed and between the windows and light fixtures, so the whole area looks perfectly balanced.
To achieve this, I had to ” shrink ” the design above and below the windows. (Do a Search here to see other posts explaining this process.) And I did end up with a pattern mis-match in the corner to the left (sorry, it’s not visible in this photo). But I figured that a mis-match in a corner 17″ from the floor, plus a 4″ high section over a window were a fair trade-off for that beautiful symmetrical headboard wall.
For the record, I worked it out so that the mis-match in the corner was only about 1.5″ off from the actual match. No one’s gonna notice! So sorry I forgot to photograph this.
I will say that the features of this room, as well as the way the pattern was printed on the wallpaper, plus the pattern itself, helped immensely to achieve this balanced outcome.
The design is called Versailles and is by Schumacher.
Headboard accent wall before. Textured wall was skim-floated and sanded smooth, then primed. Now it’s ready for wallpaper.Finished.Closer look.Detail. The seams were invisible. The lines on this paper are raised a bit, so there is a 3-D effect. I hung this non-woven wallpaper by the paste-the-wall method. Here I have rolled the strips backward, to prevent the decorative surface from hitting the paste on the wall. When I’m at the top of my ladder, I will take off the elastic hairband and let the paper unfurl down to the floor. It’s rolled so the top of the strip comes off first. I have measured the wall and noted where the center point is, then determined where I want my first strip to fall. The black box in the foreground is my laser level, and you can see the vertical red line it’s shooting at the wall, which is where I am going to line up my first strip. Positioning the wallpaper strip along the vertical laser line. This muted geometric pattern is in the Jaclyn Smith Home line by the Trend division of Fabricut. It was mighty nice to work with, and will hold up for years until the family is ready for a change of decor. Then, the polyester-content non-woven material is designed to strip off the wall easily and in one piece.
The home is in the Memorial Villages neighborhood of Houston.
Re my previous post, before I visited, the homeowner had purchased 8 rolls (4 double roll bolts) of paper. This was just exactly enough (12 strips) for the headboard wall, but I told him to order 16 more to do the rest of the room. The new paper came in a different run. So we had Run 16 for the headboard accent wall, and Run 17 for the other walls.
(You can’t mix runs on the same wall, because different runs, printed at different times with different batches of ink, will be slightly different shades. This very slight color difference will show up on the wall as a striped or “paneled” effect.)
The wallpaper is by York. It is a non-woven material, comprised of synthetic fibers rather than wood and cotton. The synthetic material does not expand when wet with paste, which means the wallpaper can be hung via the paste-the-wall method, with no “booking” or “soaking” wait time needed.
Interestingly enough, Run 16 behaved differently from Run 17. I hung the accent wall with Run 16 quite successfully using the paste-the-wall method.
But when I started the next wall using Run 17, bubbles and wrinkles developed. The paper was absorbing moisture from the paste and expanding on the wall, creating the small bubbles. Quite unexpected with a non-woven material.
The solution was to paste the back of the wallpaper, rather than the wall. This allows the material to absorb moisture and expand a tad before you get it to the wall, so it will behave itself once it is on that wall.
Unlike a traditional paper, this non-woven material did not need a lot of time to absorb moisture, but could be pasted and hung immediately. This greatly speeds up the installation process.
Pasting the paper has an additional advantage in that it renders the material more supple and pliable, which makes it much easier to work around corners or manipulate into position in tricky areas.
BeforeHeadboard wallKeeping the pattern match in corners is trickyMetallic gold lines
Yhe home is a classic ’50’s / ’60’s ranch in the Spring Branch area of Houston, that has been nicely updated. It now has an open-concept living area, with contemporary finishes and fixtures (flooring, faucets, etc.). The kitchen and bathrooms have been given a sleek new look, as well.
Instead of papering just one accent wall in the master bedroom, the homeowners opted to put the wallpaper all the way around the room. The simple pattern and soft two-tone color palate make it a good choice. The contemporary design and gold metallic accents fit it in with the updates in the rest of the home.
The wallpaper is by York. It is a non-woven material, which means it can be hung via the paste-the-wall method. See next post for info on the install itself.
This is the first of four accent walls that I am hanging wallpaper on, in this newly-renovated and updated 1935 home in the Eastwood neighborhood of Houston.
No all-white or pale grey “farmhouse” style for this young couple!… Every room has bold, saturated color and lively wallpaper patterns.
This is an accent / headboard wall in the front guest bedroom.
The paper is by Rasch, a German company. It is an embossed / textured vinyl on a non-woven backing. You can see the texture in the last, close-up photo.
Rasch makes some of the nicest papers I’ve worked with. I did use red chalk to color the edges, so the white substrate would not peek out from between the seams.
Today, I used the paste-the-wall installation method. The material is flexible, instead of some of the stiff materials I have worked with (do a Search here). And the non-woven material is designed to strip off the wall easily and in one piece when you want to redecorate.
Oh – that white door low in the middle of the wall, I think is access to plumbing in the adjoining bathroom.
The furniture, bedding, artwork, wall paint, in this bedroom of a college-aged girl are all pretty neutral. The mother wanted bolden things up with a dramatic accent wall behind the headboard. This would be a surprise when the gal came home from school for the holiday.
One wallpaper choice was the Phillip Jeffries “Wish” wallpaper. Well, anything with that designer’s name is going to be really expensive. Plus the cost of smoothing the wall and hanging the paper.
Dorota Hartwig of DMH Designs (dmhdesigns44@gmail.com) found this – very similar pattern, but much more affordable price. It is by Wallquest, one of my favorite brands, and is called Dandellions.
In one photo, you see the paper rolled out so I can see the full-size pattern and determine how I want it placed on the wall, behind where the headboard will go.
In the last photo, you see a scrap of dark chalk which I used to color the white edges of the wallpaper, to prevent them from peeking through at the seams.
The home is in the West University neighborhood of Houston.
This homeowner is all about glitz and sparkle and glitter, and originally she sought something of that ilk for the accent wall behind the headboard in their master bedroom. But she realized that if she toned down the wall, then the other aspects of the room (furniture, bedding, artwork) would stand out more.
So she went for this. I think it looks like roiling storm clouds rolling across the room. There is just enough glitter to make the wall sparkle in a subtle glow.
The pattern is by Exclusive Wallcoverings. It is an embossed (textured – see close-up shot) vinyl on a non-woven backing. I used the paste-the-wall installation method.
In the “before” photo, you see me rolling out the bolts to get a bead on the design, as well as the pattern match and placement, and measure out and cut my strips.
With PTW, it works best to roll your strips backward (from bottom up, and with the substrate facing out). Then, when you take these to the pasted wall, there is little chance of paste getting on the face of the wallpaper.
The home is in the Heights neighborhood of Houston.
The Wallpaper Lady's Blog 