A cozy nook. The homeowner likes to spend time here, soaking and relaxing. And recovering from supervising high school athletic activities ! This is a 1939 4-plex in the Montrose area of Houston that was beautifully renovated into a single-family home. So this entire master suite is carved out of what was originally one 1- bedroom apartment . Note my white 2′ x 4′ sheet of plywood over the claw-foot tub , so I can safely access the wall above. The wallpaper was placed on just one accent wall , above the tile wainscoting / chair rail . During the initial Sunday afternoon consultation , both the homeowners and I felt that this pattern on all the walls of this large master bathroom would be too overpowering . So they opted for just one accent wall . The design doesn’t have a strongly noticeable secondary or vertical pattern , but I still took the time to center the most dominant feature (the pomegranates) on the tub faucet . The faucet guy , tub guy , and tile guy didn’t get everything perfectly lined up – but nobody’s even noticing. What matters is that the finished nook looks fantastic! Also of note is that, in this near-100 year old home, the wall was bowed , and it wasn’t possible for the tile to lie flat against the entire surface. So there were some areas where the grout was 1/4″ wide, and some areas where the wall actually overshot the tile, leaving no visible grout at all. So at the area where the wallpaper met up with the top of the tile and the uneven grout line, I made a fat cut , to try to disguise the uneven line. Do a Search here to see previous posts on fat cuts . This wallpaper design is by William Morris , who was a strong force during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s , in the Art Nouveau and Arts & Crafts movements . His work is having a resurgence in popularity right now. Most are more symmetrical and repetitive than this example ( Google Strawberry Thief ) , but, true to the design aesthetic , all of them involve natural elements , such as plants , flowers , fruits , birds , and animals . In this close-up shot, you can see the raised ink of this print , which gives a slight textured feel . The manufacturer is Morris & Co. Usually M&C prints on a user-friendly non-woven material . But in the last year or two I’ve come across more and more M&C that are printed on the old-fashioned, traditional, what we call a British pulp substrate . Non-wovens are strong , durable , stain-resistant , humidity – resistant , easy to install , and easy to remove when you redecorate . Pulps , on the other hand , are just the opposite . Do a Search here to see my previous posts. None of this is a deal-breaker. The installer just needs to know what he’s getting into, before taking on the project. We hunted. This particular pattern was not available by any vendor in the NW material. Maybe it’s COVID , or supply chain issues , or maybe it’s a British thing (even though many American and Canadian companies are printing the Wm Morris designs ). Couldn’t find any outfit offering Fruit in non-woven. At any rate, the paper went up beautifully, and the basic paper material will hold up well, even if the homeowner steams up the room on her long tub soaks , and the pattern is lovely in the vintage home with new tile , tub , and faucet .
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 .
Wallpaper looks best when it arrives from the vendor with its edges just as the manufacturer trimmed them. Then you can count on it to seam up on the wall perfectly.
But it’s common for packages of wallpaper to get slammed around during shipping. This usually affects the edges, creating bashed areas that don’t look good on your walls.
Natural materials (cork, as pictured above, or grasscloth, or other natural, textured materials) – these materials are particularly susceptible to dents and fraying edges.
To nip this bud before it becomes a thorny rose, many manufacturers are placing these round protective collars (see photo) on the ends of their product, before packing for shipping.
They work pretty well. Plus, the collars themselves are made of paper, and can go into the recycling bin.
The homeowners originally sought grasscloth for this accent wall in the home office. But I talked them out of it, due to the unpleasant shading and color variation issues (click on the page to the right to read more). I showed them a sample of this white-washed cork wallpaper, and they were immediately smitten.
The previous time I hung this, the material was very homogeneous in color.
But this time, it was immediately evident that there was a darker band running down the left half of the roll, and a lighter band along the right side. Note that this is not considered a defect (even though it is obviously a problem stemming from the factory). It is considered part of the “inherent beauty of these natural materials.” Meaning, you can’t return it and expect to get your money back.
Cutting strips as they come off the roll and hanging them next to each other will result in abrupt color differences between strips – as you see in the top photo. One way to minimize that is to hang every other strip upside down, so you are then putting the dark side next to it’s dark counterpart on the previously hung strip.
In this case, because the darker areas were so dark and wide, this would have resulted in the wall having a striped look. Not what the homeowners were shooting for.
The wall was exactly 12′ wide, and the material is 3′ wide, so we needed four strips to cover the width of the wall.
We had three double-roll bolts. Each 24′ long bolt will give you two 9′ strips. Thus we needed two double rolls to cover this wall. That left us with one bolt in excess.
That turned out to be a good thing – having extra paper. The color shading was bad in one bolt, noticeable in another bolt, and the third bolt was pretty homogeneous in color.
I rejected the bolt with the worst shading. Thank goodness the client ordered a little extra paper! The bolt with the second-worst shading, I discovered that if I rolled it backwards, the shading was less severe in the inner portion.
So I took two strips off this bolt from the inside-out.
So now that gave me two strips from the first roll that were pretty homogenous. Plus two strips from the second bolt that were passable.
How to keep the color as uniform a possible across the 12′ wide wall?
II knew I wanted to place the two strips from the first, “best” bolt in the center of the wall. If I hung one right-side-up, and the next one up-side-down, keeping the darker area toward the center, the color differences would be less noticeable.
But I still had to cover 3′ width on either side of those two center strips.
One strip equaled 3′ width. So one 3′ wide strip on either side of those two center strips.
One plan, I contemplated cutting each of those the two 3′ (36″) wide strips from the second bolt into 18″ widths. Hang one right-side-up and the other upside-down. That would break up any color variations into less noticeable panels.
Only problem was, then there would be two 36″ wide chunks of material in the middle, flanked by two 18″ wide chunks on either side. I thought that would be too inconsistant, visually.
It would look better to keep all the widths the same, at 36.”
The two strips I had taken off that second double roll bolt had some shading issues, with the left side being darker than the right side. I reasoned that it would be less noticeable if the darker, shaded area, was toward the outer corners – sort of as if sunlight or furniture or window shutters were casting shadows.
So I plotted to use a full 36″ wide strip on either side of the center strips. I would position them so that the lighter side of each strip was toward the center – toward those two originally-placed strips. This meant placing one right-side-up and the other one upside-down.
Thus the darker edge of the strips would be situated toward the corners of the wall – a logical place for shadows and light to play tricks on the eye.
That’s what I ended up doing. And the finished wall does really look very homogeneous!
Yes, I am quite guilty of over-thinking way more than I should. But I think the client deserves the best look possible. And, to be honest, all this plotting and engineering is a big part of the fun of hanging wallpaper!
I’ve tacked two strips of this cork wallpaper to the wall. The obvious thing you see is the color difference between the two strips where they meet in the center of the wall.
But look more closely and you will notice that there is an abrupt shading difference between the left and right sides of each bolt. And in the strip on the left, the dark left side is even darker at the top of the bolt, than several feet down as you move toward the floor.
These effects are called shading and paneling and color variations. It’s important to note that these are not considered “defects,” but are deemed to be the “inherent beauty of the natural materials.” In other words, if you don’t like that paneled look, they are not going to give you your money back.
There are some tricks to minimize these effects when the paper is on the wall. I will delve into those in another post … at some point.
During the pandemic, the man and wife are both working from home … in the same improvised home office … and getting on each other’s nerves. The lady of the house decreed it’s time for the guy to move out!
So they commandeered the home’s original living room and are turning it into an office for him.
They wanted something to warm the look of the four all-white walls, while maintaining an air of professionalism and business, and at the same time being a choice that could transition to another use, once the pandemic ends and the room no longer needs to serve as an office.
This white-washed cork wallpaper with flecks of gold is the perfect choice for an accent wall behind the man’s desk.
As with all natural material wallpapers, you can expect shading and color variations between and even within strips. This one turned out pretty homogeneous.
I don’t have information on the brand or manufacturer. The material is natural cork, which is applied to the paper backing in bocks approximately 6″ square. It comes 3′ wide x 24′ long, and is a paste-the-material product.
The rather contemporary home is located in Bellaire (Houston).
You expect shading and paneling (slight difference in color between strips) with natural materials like grasscloth. But when a paper is made from start to finish in a factory, with inks mixed up by computer and applied by machine, you expect the color to be uniform.
Yet, in this product by York, you can see there is difference in color intensity between the right and left sides of the paper. This is not real bad, and this room does not have a lot of long seams, so the color differences aren’t too noticeable.
But if this were, for instance, a 9′ high bedroom accent wall, or a whole dining room, the color variation might be displeasing.
York, and this Sure Strip line of theirs, is one of my favorite brands. But lately, I have had good number of defects – most of them related to printing problems.
The original dark paint was bold and beautiful. But the homeowners wanted something softer and textured. They listened to my “rant” about color variations in grasscloth (see link at right), and chose this embossed vinyl replica instead.
They couldn’t have chosen better!
We were worried about the usual very visible vertical seams in grasscloth, and how they would juxtapose with the vertical boards in the wainscoting at the bottom portion of the walls. The spacing between the boards did not sync at all with the width of the wallpaper. If the seams in the paper were visible and did not coordinate with the vertical elements below, it would have ended up a very visually confusing room.
Luckily, and very surprisingly, this material turned out to be wonderfully homogeneous, and the seams are virtually invisible.
What you do see is the is the very soft, muted texture and warm color that envelope the room. I like to say that this sort of pattern emulates a finely tailored man’s suit.
That last photo is distorted a bit, so ignore those wavy, swirly lines.
This wallcovering is by Warner, in their Textures VII, Grasscloth Resource book, on page 32, a lightly embossed (textured) vinyl on a scrim (woven fabric) backing, and is a random / reverse pattern match (meaning, there is no pattern to match).
It comes either 26″ wide or 52″/54″ wide. Lil’ ol’ me can’t wrangle that extra-wide stuff, so I asked the homeowners to buy the 26″ option.
This type of vinyl is way more resistant to dings and stains than most traditional wallpapers. The scrim backing also makes it easy to strip off the wall later, and with minimal damage to the wall. The embossing adds just a touch of texture.
Best of all, because it is man-made instead of a natural material, there is none of the displeasing shading and color variations that are so prevalent in real grasscloth.
The home is a relatively new build in the Heights neighborhood of Houston.
I have worked for this couple in their charming 1929 bungalow in West University ( Houston ) several times since the 1990’s. They definitely are not people to go with the all-white or all-grey or minimalist trends that are popular today. These folks like COLOR!
The dining room walls were originally upholstered in a botanical print on blue (which the homeowner did himself, and did a mighty find job of, too). So the room never was bland white. 🙂 But now, 20 years later, they were ready for an update.
Their contractor removed the fabric and then skim-floated the walls smooth. Usually I have to go back and re-smooth the walls … but this guy did a really good job, and I was able to simply prime, and then hang the paper.
This is a vinyl product named ” Wild Silk ,” and is by Thibaut . It’s much more stain-resistant and durable than real fabric. Unlike real silk and other natural materials like grasscloth , this product has a pattern match. This means that you are not going to see each separate panel or visible seams, like you do with real silk. So the walls have a much more homogeneous and pleasing look.
The challenge lay with the old house and its un-plumb walls and un-level ceiling and window/door moldings. Since the ceiling was not level, if I hung the wallpaper true to plumb, then it would start “tracking” off-kilter at the ceiling line, and appear to be running either uphill or downhill. This effect was further complicated by the way the pattern ran along the window and door frames.
I decided to keep the pattern parallel to the ceiling molding line. This meant letting it go crooked along the door and window frames, if that’s how it turned out. The ceiling line was more visible and more important.
Since the pattern was tracking off-kilter, I used a razor blade and a straightedge to trim off a wedge-shaped chunk from one side of the wallpaper. This forced the pattern to move up (or down). After a few strips, I had tweaked it enough that the design was moving straight across under the crown molding.
Even though the strips were not hanging plumb, it looked wonderful along the ceiling line. This “silk” pattern was very accommodating of that. If it had been a design with a prominent motif that the eye wanted to see marching straight across the ceiling AND straight down along a door frame, it would have been much more difficult to pull off – maybe impossible.
Going around the window (no pic) was even more complicated. Because I was tweaking the three strips above the window to follow the crown molding, and also the three strips below the window – and you can’t guarantee that these will all adjust at the same rate. So getting the strip to the left of the window (no pic) to match up with the strips above AND below the window would be pretty impossible.
So I was extremely pleased when the pattern on all these strips did match up, within about 1/16″.
This is a vinyl material and was somewhat difficult to push tightly into edges and corners, and to cut through. I was glad that I didn’t have intricate decorative moldings to cut around. I used orange chalk to color the edges of the material, to keep the white substrate from showing at the seams.
I love the way the salmon color coordinates with the painted trim. Who paints door moldings orange??! THESE people do – and I highly applaud it! No boring all-white rooms in this house!
The look is bold, but surprisingly warm. The orange moldings against white walls would have been jolting. But with the salmon colored wallpaper, the whole effect is unified, inviting, and invigorating!
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