Yes, some papers do stretch / expand when they get wet with paste. But that’s not the situation here, because this is A.) a non-woven material, which generally do not expand, and B.) every strip was treated the same way. In other words, if every strip is pasted, booked, and left to sit for the same length of time, ALL the strips should expand the same amount, right? And the pattern should match at the top, middle, and bottom. Right?
But even that argument doesn’t apply, because this, again, is a NW / non-expansion material, and, besides, I didn’t paste the wallpaper but pasted the wall instead. So the material had no chance to get wet or swollen with paste.
I believe this is a factory trimming issue. Somewhere along the line, the trimmers got off-track, or started trimming on the bias, just enough to throw off the pattern match.
In cases like this, the rule of thumb industry standard is to match the pattern as best as possible at eye level (middle of the wall) and let nature take its course, as they say, on the upper and lower sections.
Luckily this particular pattern only had one motif area that matched across the seams, and there were only three of those per the height of each strip. So the two slight mis-matches were both way above and below eye level, so not very noticeable.
This pattern is called Palm Leaves and is by Cole & Son . Other than this printing snafu, it’s a good quality wallpaper. See previous post
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