I’m always thrilled to see wallpaper featured in magazines – especially magazines that historically promote sparse , all-white interiors and décor . This February / March 2023 issue showcases a LOT of wallpaper – including right her on the front cover ! The magazine didn’t list much, if any, info about the patterns or brands. So please just enjoy the patterns and decorating elements. If you want to pursue one of these, I can hook you up with a merchant who can probably find it for you, or something similar. Whimsical but muted ” village ” pattern as backdrop for headboard accent wall . Note the use of nubby textured textiles to warm up this wintery room. Sweet roses . I hung this very pattern just a few months ago. https://wallpaperlady.wordpress.com/2022/06/26/romantic-vintage-look-rose-bedroom-accent-wall/ Shore birds in flight have been a popular theme . This is an obvious (and much more affordable ) riff on the $$$ ” Acanthus ” design by Schumacher . This one is a lot more playful , too, IMO.We’re entering a guest house / B&B / airBnB with several rental units having the same footprint , but different decorating. Look all the way to the left – a tiny snippet of wallpaper on the accent wall , nicely coordinated with the color of the cabinets , as well as complimentary to the pink-ish wall paint . Wheat wreaths on wheat wallpaper .Subtle stripes in a sleeping area . Note how nicely the installer centered / balanced the stripes on the headboard / focal wall . An earthy, natural pattern I hung not too long ago, and also have it coming up again. Looks like dandelion seedheads, maybe. Fun upward movement.Many ” Farmhouse ” styled homes these days are using tile that looks like this. But this backdrop is actually wallpaper . Showing how you can get the visual impact of patterned tile without the expense or permanent impact on your wall . Cute idea for the backs of narrow shelves . This is a clever look on stairs , too – I’d say mostly in ” artsy ” themed homes . This wall is actually made of ship-lap . But there are many wallpaper patterns out there that mimic the look of this popular decorating material . Particularly the Magnolia Home line by Joanna Gaines , made by York .More wallpaper masquerading as tile on this bar backsplash . Bright colorful butterflies . Same color scheme , different wallpaper pattern . Cheery lemon pattern . Here’s a similar one I did recently. https://wallpaperlady.wordpress.com/2022/11/11/picasso-slept-here-crazy-pattern-in-a-complicated-powder-room/Fun with green and leaves Moving from pattern to texture . Here you see natural fiber grasscloth flanking the entryway , as well as on the back wall . A fun Industrial Modern / Rustic look for this accent wall . Not sure if this is a plastic 3-D faux brick material , or wallpaper . But there are plenty of brick-look wallpapers available , many with light texture on the surface . For help tracking down something you love, contact Dorota at the Sherwin-Williams on University in the Rice Village. Call first and discuss your project. Wed – Sat (713) 529-6515 .Slightly ethnic look to this dark blue headboard accent wall in a guest bedroom .
OK, because this CRAPPY “New Editor” that Word Press FORCED on us a couple of years ago – which is EXTREMELY difficult to use, BTW, and the Big Wigs at Word Press don’t give a flip, despite my many comments to them … Anyway, it decided to eat / delete the post I just spent 30 minutes typing up, so I’m going to have to write it all over again and try to remember all the points I had made. PISSES ME OFF, this DAMNED WORDPRESS NEW EDITOR. End of rant. But STILL FARKIN’ ANGRY!!! Anyway, you’re looking at images of the same pattern motif , from the same Run number (do a Search here to learn more about runs ), but two different rolls / bolts . Look at where my pencil is pointing in the top example – at the green leaf to the left of the blue flower . You’ll see the light green color shadowing , or following the dark green . Now look at the same motif on the example below it. Here both green colors are together . Why? What’s happened is that the printing presses at the factory have gotten out of register . The machines print each color separately , layering them on top of each other . For example, brown first, then light green, then dark green, then blue, etc. Each turn of the printing rollers has to be perfectly synced with the previous, so that the colors and motifs line up correctly . Here, obviously, something got out of whack . Looking at this, the mis-alignment is not a big deal. It’s a loose , cheerful pattern , and it doesn’t really matter if the colors aren’t lined up perfectly. In fact, I think it makes the pattern more fun. The problem comes when trying to match strips from one roll up to another, because the design won’t match perfectly at the seams . That does matter IMO . See my other post tonight . The pattern is called Wildwood and is by Rifle Paper , which is made by York .
This is a fairly large powder room with a sloped ceiling, as it is situated under the stairs. You can see a bit of the ceiling at the top of the photo. The room also had this odd recessed niche with “columns” on either side, and a door leading to a closet. In addition, there were tons of the rounded / bull-nosed edges that have been common in new homes in the last 10 years or so. These are tricky to wrap wallpaper around, and equally difficult to trim wallpaper to the edge. Here is the niche area done, with wallpaper wrapped around the columns, and cut neatly along the horizontal bull nosed edge above the entry. Wrapping the wallpaper around this edge and onto the ceiling of the niche would have made the area way too busy and claustrophobic. Because these edges are never perfectly straight and level, it’s also quite likely that the wallpaper will go crooked, and you’ll end up with gaps or overlaps at the seams. A better option is to paint that ceiling area. I suggested the murky green color that’s in the leaves on the wallpaper pattern. Here’s the east wall of the room. The vanity and sink are at the bottom right.Here it is finished. In this case, the fir-down underside was only about a foot deep, so less chance of the wallpaper going crooked, so I did wrap it around the rounded edge and underneath. Still, one of the wallpaper strips did twist askew, and there was a small gap at one seam. With this pattern, no biggie – I just cut out a leaf and pasted it over the gap.I told you the room had crazy angles!Note that in papering angled areas like this, you can match the pattern in some places, but there will be mis-matches in others, such as where the sloped ceiling meets the fir-down. This wild pattern is perfect for disguising any mis-matches!Rolling the paper out on the floor, to get an idea of the pattern’s layout . Closer look at the lemons and leaves . And angles . It looks like a Picasso painting, don’t you think? The homeowner wanted something wild and fun , to set off the white minimalism in the rest of the home . The pattern is called Citrus and is by A Street Prints . It’s a nice non-woven material , doesn’t expand , and can be hung by the paste the wall method , although I opted to paste the paper , as I usually do. Non-wovens are designed to strip off the wall easily and in one piece, with no / minimal damage to the wall when you redecorate . They’re usually a pleasure to install . They’re more stain resistant and more able to withstand humidity than many traditional wallpapers . The home of this busy young family is in the West University area of Houston .
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 .
Sink wall primed and ready for wallpaper.Sink wall done. (except for a 1″ wide sliver on the left)A larger view of this pattern. Don’t know why it’s showing pink here … it’s not. The craze started years ago with the ” iconic ” Martinique tropical pattern, which has graced the walls of the Beverly Hills Hotel since 1942. The design is fabulously lush, and overscaled. Makes an unmistakable impact when you walk from the pool and into the adjoining bathroom and are met with – WHAM! Deep in the tropics!My client was drawn to Brazilliance by Dorothy Draper. And of course, there’s the original Martinique. Both these versions are screen prints made with bad (IMO) inks on uncooperative substrates, and result in puckering within the wallpaper and curling at the seams. Do a Search here to read my experience hanging the Martinique. In addition, these high-end papers are notoriously expensive. And a very long 41″ pattern repeat means there’s potentially a lot of waste – meaning, a lot of paper that is cut off and thrown away in order to match the pattern. My client was open to suggestions, and happily found a much better option. This Daintree Palm by Graham & Brown is equally huge and stunning, but at a fraction of the price. In addition, it’s printed on a non-woven substrate, which is much easier to work with, the vinyl surface is much more resistant to splashes and dirt, and it will strip off the wall easily when it’s time to redecorate. I want to make the point that while this pool bath is not part of the main house, it does have air conditioning and heat – climate control are imperative to ensuring that wallpaper stays on the walls, and stays free of mildew and other issues. The home is in the Garden Oaks neighborhood of Houston.
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.
The first installer was inexperienced, and left gaps at the seams, wrinkles, creases, mis-matched pattern, and even tears. The homeowners had their painter strip off the wallpaper, patch the torn areas of the wall, prime, … and then they had to purchase a whole new mural. Oh, and next they called me! 🙂 The painter was unschooled on wallpaper, too, so he just grabbed something off the shelf at Sherwin-Williams that had “wallpaper” on the label, and rolled it on. That particular primer, Pro 935, is meant to be used in different sorts of situations, and was too glossy and too tacky. I covered it with my preferred Pro 977 Ultra Prime by Roman. Putting latex / water based paint over torn drywall will often cause the moisture from the paint to soak into the drywall paper and cause it to expand, which creates bubbles. These look bad under the new wallpaper. Here I have cut around one such bubble and removed the top layer. I will skim-float over this area, let it dry, sand it smooth, and then prime over it. A whole wall’s worth of mural fun rolled up into one cylinder. They provided powdered paste – which I did not use, mostly because these tend to be too wet and can lead to staining on these non-woven materials. I did, however, take the paste home with me, because every now and then you run into a delicate wallpaper that requires this stuff – which can be hard to source. I started hanging in the middle of the wall. Mostly because whoever measured forgot to add FOUR INCHES to both the height and the width. Instead, the manufacturer added only one scant inch at each side. This didn’t give much play at all, to accommodate trimming at the ceiling and floor, and walls / ceiling that went off plumb / level. This means that if the ceiling wasn’t level, it could start sloping either up or down, and that means the mural would start getting either cut off, or some white space might show at the top. By starting in the middle, I could split the difference between any irregularities, and, hopefully, over the 12′ width of the wall, now divided into two 6′ sections, any off-level sloping would be minimal enough that it wouldn’t visually impact the top or bottom of the design. I know that doesn’t make sense to a lot of you reading this, but I do have a number of paperhangers who follow my blog, and they do “get it” and hopefully will learn some new tricks. monkey, giraffe, flamingo, cockatiel Finished and ready for furniture – and a baby!For this non-woven product, I used the recommended paste-the-wall installation method. I can see why the other guy had difficulty. This was a very thin, but stiff, material. I got wrinkles, too. It took some time and some finesse to urge them out of the paper. This is another reason why I started in the center of the wall. If wallpaper starts warping or wrinkling, it usually will cause the outer edge (the edge not butted up against the previous strip) to expand and twist. As each subsequent strip goes up, the twisting and distortion becomes magnified. You can’t butt a straight edge of a new strip up against a strip that is bowed out of shape on the wall. Thus, by starting in the middle, I can minimize the number of bowed edges. Instead of four, there will be only two. And the amount of distortion will be less per panel. I will note that this usually does not happen with non-woven materials. A big chunk of mural was cut off by the door and lost to the trash pile. As the mural worked its way across the top of the door and down the right side, a different set of leaves, and a lot of blank area, was going to end up in that 6″ wide space between the door and the wall. I thought it would look cooler if the design of the foliage to the left of the door continued on to the right side of the door. So I saved the strip that got cut off by the door and then did some tweaking in various ways, and got that narrow strip placed to the right of the door. When you look at it, it appears that the leaves and fronds are passing from left to right uninterrupted through the doorway.
Walls were originally mud-brown. Here my wallpaper primer has been applied. So lively and fresh!Close-up.Detail. It looks like a water color artist has taken his brush to the walls.Wallquest – one of my preferred brands.
A once-drab, cookie-cutter powder room in a new build in Cypress (far northwest Houston) is now airy and fresh, thanks to this water color-y pattern of trees, leaves, and birds.
The manufacturer is Wallquest, and the wallpaper was purchased at Ballard Designs. This well-loved mail order company has a brand new actual store on W. Gray in River Oaks / Montrose (Houston). They sell a number of wallpaper brands (good quality and medium price range), and have designers with extensive wallpaper experience available to help you (call before heading over).
The headboard wall had been painted a darker brown than the other walls in this master bedroom … but the homeowner sought a more soothing and comforting feeling for her bedroom – which has become something of a sanctuary, during these days of COVID and stay at home.
Interior designer Kandi Palella, of Kandi Contemporary Design, found this warm, earthy, organic wallpaper pattern. Viewed up close, it has the look of a hand-woven blanket … It really makes this room feel snug and welcoming.
Kandi coordinated other elements of the room (not pictured). Like a rug in the exact same colors and with the same woven texture. And artwork that includes leaves in the same color, as well as the scratchy fabric-like texture. One thing you can see are leaves reiterated on the bedspread, that are almost identical to the pattern on the wall.
This wallpaper is a non-woven material, and I used the paste-the-wall installation method. The manufacturer is Chesapeake, by Brewster.
The home is in Porter, which is way north east Houston.
Here’s something different for a baby girl’s nursery. The mother wanted a “Beverly Hilton Hotel” look – this hotel features the iconic “Martinique” banana leaf wallpaper. It is fabulous, but it’s quite expensive, and it’s difficult to install, too. Do a search here to read my experience with it.
I was able to direct this mom-to-be to my favorite source for buying wallpaper (read below), and she helped her find something at a more reasonable price, that is better looking, too, and definitely is holding to the wall better.
The rest of the room – walls, ceiling, woodwork, are painted a very pale pink. There’s just enough pink in the wallpaper to coordinate it with the rest of the room and pull everything together.
This went on one accent wall in a baby’s room in Clear Lake. The paper is in the Sure Strip line by York, one of my favorite brands. I did have a little trouble this time with seams wanting to curl back, but only where the dark ink crossed the seam. This tends to be because the inks absorb moisture from the paste differently from the paper substrate, and they fight each other. I stayed a little late to be sure the seams were setting securely as the paper dried.
This wallpaper pattern was bought at below retail price from Dorota Hartwig at Southwestern Paint on Bissonnet near Kirby. (713) 520-6262 or dorotasouthwestern@hotmail.com. She is great at helping you find just the perfect paper! Discuss your project and make an appointment before heading over to see her.
Here’s something different for a baby girl’s nursery. The mother wanted a “Beverly Hilton Hotel” look – this hotel features the iconic “Martinique” banana leaf wallpaper. It is fabulous, but it’s quite expensive, and it’s difficult to install, too. Do a search here to read my experience with it.
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