In anticipation of this accent wall mural, the parents had the three other walls painted a soft salmon-y pink. Finished! I love the way the pattern ” crescendos ” toward the center and top…. perfect for cradling the crib. The blotchy look will disappear as the wallpaper dries, and the background will become more bright white. The mural came a set size, of 12.5′ W x 9′ H. The width fit the wall with just a few inches extra, which was perfect. But the wall was less than 8′ high and the mural was 9′, so we lost about 12″ of the mural. I brought the design as close to the ceiling as I could, while still preserving that light blue flower at the center top. This meant that most of the pattern lost was from the bottom, which has more stems and flowers – but not as pretty as the elements toward the top. And most of the bottom is going to be hidden by the crib and other furnishings, anyway. Also note that the right side of the mural pattern does not match up with the pattern on the left. Meaning, the mural does not continue from one mural to the next. This means that, if you have a really wide wall, for instance, or a powder room more than 12′ wide, you cannot place two or more murals next to each other and have the pattern continue uninterrupted. This is pretty standard for Anewall murals. But there are tons of other mural manufacturers who do make products that will accommodate wider spaces. And that are also custom-sized to your rooms’ specific dimensions. Close-up looks like a translucent watercolor painting. The pattern is called Wildflower . Cute hidden creatures like this snail. On her own, the mom originally purchased a peel & stick mural. Once she contacted me, I set her straight on how … err … awful that stuff is. (Click the link on the right to read my page about this material.) The company allowed her to send the P&S back and exchange it for this better quality pre-pasted option, which I like a lot. (I’m not fond of their traditional which is vinyl and requires special install techniques). Still, we had some issues which I’ve come to expect from Anewall, such as gaps and overlaps at the seams, and some minor pattern mis-matches at the seams . This is a newish home in the League City area of Houston.
I was two weeks hanging wallpaper on this 5-room job in League City – 648 miles on my van! The last day as I finished and was packing up to leave, my client said, “Wait one minute!”
Then she handed me this box of cupcakes from a boutique bakery called Rise, in Friendswood.
Can you say ’80’s?! Dated and soiled, it really was time for this 30+ year old original paper to go. Poor colors in this photo – the new paper is actually aqua and green a a bit of grey. One pattern was used for the walls, and another for the fir down / soffits. A little better view of the true colors.There is a pearlized or iridescent quality to this wallpaper. Candice Olson’s line by York. Anything she touches, you can bet it will have a bit of shimmer and glimmer and glam. Curlicues, caterpillars, or corn curls – this is a fun and active design, used just on the fir downs over the cabinets. The Easy-Walls line in the Chesapeake collection by Brewster is a very nice pre-pasted paper, easy to install and easy to remove. It’s a very thin non-woven material, similar to another of my favorites, the Sure-Strip by York. This shot, taken through the adjoining dining room, shows how beautifully the colors and patterns coordinate. Oh, and did I mention the beautiful new blue and green glass tile backsplash?!
The two-sister duo who selected patterns and colors for this League City (Houston) home did a superb job coordinating the two bedrooms, one bathroom, and the dining room and kitchen. The whole house has a very pulled together look, with a theme of gardens, light, fresh, and uplifting.
Originally the walls were heavily textured. See previous post for how I smoothed them. Here they are smooth, primed, and ready for wallpaper. With it’s squiggly upward movement and bright aqua & lime color scheme, this paper adds so much life and energy to the space!This close-up best shows the true colors.A Street Prints is a very nice brand. These are almost always non-woven, paste-the-wall materials, but this time the instructions said to paste the paper. I usually do that anyway.
Old, dated and dingy paper has been stripped off, walls are primed, and now ready for wallpaper. Done. Palm leaves accent wall on the left looks out into a landscaped courtyard. The quieter paper on the right going on three walls.Close up of the accent wall. The paper has a light sheen. By Fine Decor. A non-woven material / paste the wall installation method (I usually prefer to paste the paper).Bright pastel colors, and an easy-to-live with design that sort of fades into the background, giving a textured look. This is a good choice when you want the items in the room (furnishings, artwork) to take center stage, and the wallpaper simply provides a soft backdrop.Close up.A Street Prints, a very good brand. This is also non-woven, paste-the-wall wallpaper.
This room adjoins the master bath I blogged about on Nov. 12. Scroll down and see how beautifully the papers in all three areas coordinate, both in color and in theme.
Gradually, through my blog posts, you will see how five rooms in this home were updated and “cheered up” by the new colors and patterns.
This home is in League City, a south suburb of Houston.
Original vinyl wallpaper in this bathroom was peeling badly, due to humidity and poor ventilation. The design was dated, too. And, gee – borders are pretty much a thing of the past. Time for an update. Old paper has been stripped off, wall has been primed. Ready for the new stuff!What a pretty and cheery pattern! The window looks out to a lush and green backyard, and this foliage-themed wallpaper helps pull the feeling inside. I was losing natural daylight, so the pretty blue and lime tones are not showing up well. The colors are a little more true here. This almost looks like a water color painting!A Street Prints is the manufacturer. This is non-woven material, also called paste-the-wall. It went up very nicely. And, because there is no vinyl and because the substrate has a higher polyester content and less paper, this should hold up much better in the humid bathroom. Nonetheless, I did lecture the homeowner to run the exhaust fan and to keep the bathroom door open for air circulation.
The home is in the League City subdivision south of Houston.
This small floral print was fashionable when it went up, 30+ years ago. But now it’s dated, and also some stains and dirt are showing. Time for an update!Old paper has been stripped off, the walls have been primed with my favorite Roman Pro 977 Ultra Prime, and ready for wallpaper. Done! An accent of grasscloth was used on one wall. I love the way the greens match, and everything coordinates with the paneling / wainscoting. Usually I place the pattern so a prominent design motif sits at the ceiling line. But in a room with wainscoting or chair rail, that horizontal mid point in the wall is more visible. So I plotted to have the bottom of the dark green, most visible flower land just above the top of the chair rail. It looks like it’s growing from the wood! The pattern also just happened to land nicely at the ceiling line, with no major design elements getting cut in half. The material has woven fabric look to it – but that’s just the printing. It’s actually a very flat paper. It was very thin, and reminded me of papers from decades ago. It hugs the wall very tightly. I liked it a lot. Exclusive WallcoveringsThe grasscloth accent wall. All four strips were reverse-hung, and hung in the sequence they came off the bolt. Yet you see a color difference (called paneling or shading ) between some strips. This is quite typical of natural products like grasscloth and sisal. Close up. Bad photo … the color is actually an attractive green. The material is more of a thin balsa wood about 1/2″ wide, rather than traditional grass or reeds. I feared it would be difficult to cut through, but it turned out to work very nicely. But it would not have been good in a room with corners or intricate details to trim around.
The home is in League City, a southern suburb of Houston.
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.)
The baby may be too young to groove on this accent wall in her nursery, but the parents LOVED it!
This popular wallpaper pattern is called “Petal Pusher” and is by Hygge & West. I have hung it several times, all in different colors. Today, I put it in a baby girl’s room in a new development in League City.
An odd thing about papers by Hygge & West, when the material gets wet by the paste, I guess it expands and stretches a little. I find that the pattern on the second strip matches the pattern on the previous strip at the top of the wall, but then begins to drop down as you go further down the wall. Getting the pattern to match required manipulating the paper so that, for example, 5″ of paper would fit into a space only 4 1/2″.
This stretching and expanding of wallpaper is typical and expected. But what I don’t get is, assuming all strips are pasted with the same paste and booked for the same length of time, if one strip stretches a little, shouldn’t the next strip stretch exactly the same? So, theoretically, the pattern on each strip should match up to the pattern on the previous strip. Yet I had a wrestling match with every strip, and more and more as I progressed along the wall. Good thing that this wall only called for five strips.
And, just like the last time I hung this paper (a month or two ago, blue on white), the inked areas absorb paste differently from the white background, and that causes the seams to curl a little – which then requires more work than usual to get the seams to lie flat – which can damage the paper.
Other than that, it’s a really cool pattern, and people love it, and it sure does give that baby girl something to look at!
I am about to hang a finely-textured gold grasscloth with something of a metallic sheen in the space between these bookshelves, in a home office in League City, south of Houston.
I have smoothed and primed the wall, but noticed that a little of the original painters’ white paint has wrapped just a teenie bit around and onto the navy blue walls of the bookcases. It looked fine when everything was painted and you had white wall against blue shelves. But with the gold grasscloth going next to the shelves, there was the potential for a wee little stripe of white to show between the wallpaper and the navy blue shelves.
So I got out my Box of Tricks (paint bottles) and mixed two colors together until I got a pretty good match, and then used an artist’s paintbrush from Texas Art Supply to cover up the white line where the navy blue shelf meets the white wall.
This way, you won’t have any white wall peeping out from between the new gold grasscloth and the navy blue wood.
The Wallpaper Lady's Blog 