Spoonflower wallpaper is packaged a little differently from other brands. It comes in what they call “rolls” that are 2′ wide, and then you can get different lengths – 3′, 6′, 9′, or 12′. Always get a little extra length. Suppose your walls are 8′ 6″ high. You’d think you can get by using the 9′ long roll . But remember you need to add 2″ to both to top and bottom to accommodate trimming and wonky walls. Adn here’s another reason to order extra length. Say I want horse at the top of the wall. I sure dont want his head to be cut off. Here the Spoonflower paper comes with the horses chopped in half. Yuck! Also, the next row of horses don’t line up so that their heads will be intact at the top of the wall without the hooves of the horses above them showing – which would look distracting. So I’m going to have to cut off and throw away several inches – up to the length of the pattern repeat – in orer to get the motifs I want at the top of the wall. Hence, the homeowner needs to purchase the 12′ long rolls.
Before. The adjoining walls have been painted a complimentary blue. The mom-to-be and I talked about whether or not to paper the sloped area. To me, since the sloped area goes up as high as the blue painted walls on either side, it looks more cohesive to run the paper up to the same height as the painted walls. Note that the sloped areas is a flat surface. The appearance of an upward bend on the right side is an optical illusion. The wall to the right is folding in, and is creating a false image. Horses done! The ceiling in this room was really off-level , and so you see some of the horses’ heads getting cut off as the eye moves to the right. The horses do run straight along under the sloped area, and along the top of the baseboard (not pictured). Close-up shows a linen – like appearance . Note that the seams on Spoonflower are intended to be overlapped, by about 1/2″. The ridges will be visible – more or less, depending on the angle the light is coming from. In the photo above, the sheen on the seam on the right is over-exaggerated due to light hitting it from the side. In real life, once the paste dries and the wallpaper shrinks tight to the wall, you won’t notice the overlaped areas. And one very good thing about overlapped seams – they are stronger, won’t shrink and gap and show white ate the seams , and put less stress on walls with unstable sub-surfaces . This material comes in panels 24″ wide x 12′ long / high. Don’t think that you can use every square inch of that strip. Here you can see that the mfgr cut off the horses’ heads at the top of the strip. So, if I want to place a particular horse at the top of the wall, I will have to roll out the paper and then cut off and discard parts of the pattern that I can’t use. This can be up to a full pattern repeat – which, in this case, was close to 1.5′. That’s 1.5′ wide x 2′ wide, which comes out to about 3 square feet of wallpaper that goes into the trash. Not a big deal. I factor all this in, and have my clients purchase enough paper to accommodate this. Just wanted to emphasize how you can’t plan to use every square inch of wallpaper, and to have the installer measure and calculate how much is needed before you purchase . The manufacturer is Spoonflower , who seems to be having a burst of exposure and popularity right now. They make a few types of wallpaper. I like this one very much, but do not like their other options. So, if you are considering Spoonflower , please buy their ” Prepasted Removable Smooth ” option. Do NOT get their ” Traditional Pebble ” or the ” Peel & Stick .” Both are extremely problematic , and may be short-lived on your walls.
We considered putting the wallpaper on all four walls, but the pattern would have been overwhelming in a small under-the-stairs powder room , especially with sloped ceilings crunching down into the space. So the homeowner opted to paper just this one accent wall over the vanity / sink . This family loves West Texas , and visits Marfa when they can. I positioned so the cattle ’s feet march right above the backsplash , and the horse lines up against the right corner , and even right into the angle at the topHere it is, with the light sconces back (shades will be added later), and the rustic mirror frame in place (mirror glass will be added later). Tucked some paper into the little cubbyhole on the left under the vanity . Cows , cowboys , horses , teepees , mesas , cactus , booze , buffalo , pups , and Prada – that’s Marfa! Marfa Toile is in the very popular City Toile line by Katie Kime . This is a fairly heavy vinyl surface on a non-woven backing . Not my favorite, but it was OK to work with. I did the paste the wall installation method .
The homeowners had this board-and-batten wainscoting added to one wall of the nursery. It compliments similar elements in other areas of the house. Finished. The side walls are painted a very, very faint pink blush color – just enough to add warmth and unity to the room. Horses! The mom-to-be had the manufacturer enlarge the scale of the figures, to better fit the size of the wall. That’s a nice service from Spoonflower. This wallpaper is hung by overlapping about 1/2″ at the seams. This is not common, but there are several companies that work this way. I actually like it. It eliminates the chance of gapping at the seams as the paper dries and shrinks. And it distributes torque / tension on the wall cross that 1/2″, so less worry about a seam pulling up due to wall surface delamination. This overlap does leave you with a bit of a visible ridge running the length of each seam. A little bit noticeable here, but less so on a busier pattern with less “blank” areas.Spoonflower is a nice company. But I like ONLY their “Pre-Pasted Removable Smooth” option. I am not as fond of their “Pebble” – mainly because they can’t describe clearly what, exactly, it is. And definitely Do NOT get any peel & stick product, by this company or any other (see page to the right.)
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