Run Numbers Matter – More

When you hang wallpaper, you need to make sure that all the rolls / bolts are from the same Run Number / Batch Number / Dye Lot. This means that the rolls were printed at the same time from the same batch of ink.
Another batch of ink that’s mixed up and then printed a few weeks later may be a very slightly different shade. You can easily see that color difference in this photo.
Placing strips from two different runs next to each other on the same wall will result in a subtle but unpleasant striped effect.

Besides the color differences of the ink, the printing press can be positioned differently, too.
Look at the bottom strip, at the left of the photo. The vertical line on the left is wide.
But now look at the strip on the right, which is on top. It’s from a different Run.
Here the vertical strips is narrow.
If strips of wallpaper from these two different runs were placed next to each other on a wall, not only would you see a color difference between them, but you would have an unpleasant striped effect, because one vertical stripe element in the design would be unnaturally wide, and another would be much narrower. In between would be other stripes that are the standard medium width.
Very un-uniform and very un-pleasing.
Before any wallpaper rolls get cut, pasted, and stuck to the wall, check to be sure the run numbers are all the same!

Defects in Today’s Wallpaper

Yellow strip along right side of strip at top of photo. Grey strip just to the right of my pencil in the second photo.

Horizontal yellow stripe about center in this photo

Hard to see, but this photo shows “ghosting” of the print from the instruction sheet showing through the surface of the wallpaper. The instructions had been rolled up inside the paper. Somehow, the ink transferred onto the wallpaper. This ruined about 2′ of the bolt of wallpaper – multiplied by three bolts.

Edges splayed / curled up, probably due to a trimming glitch at the factory. In addition, several feet of this affected area had a darker color – which would have showed up as a stripe along one edge of the wallpaper.

This Candice Olson wallpaper is made by York. York is normally one of my favorite brands. But today was disappointing.

Once I discovered these printing and trimming defects, I contacted the homeowner. After kicking options around, she decided to NOT have the wallpaper hung. Why spend all that money for paper and labor, and have a less-than-stellar result?!

She will present these problems to the company. There is a good chance that she can avoid defects in the replacement paper, IF she gets them to send a different run.

Here is another reason why I am glad she purchased from a “real” wallpaper company (in this case, she bought from Burke Decor), instead of a middle-man company such as Wayfair, Etsy, Ebay, and even Amazon.

A wallpaper-focused company will be able to ferret out problems. And they will be knowledgeable of Run Numbers and etc. So the replacement they send will be free of printing and other types of defects.

This wallpaper is by York, in the Candice Olson line.

Diamonds Brighten a Bellaire Bathroom

Originally, this home in the Bellaire neighborhood of Houston was rife with the “Tuscan” look, and this under-the-stairs powder room shows just that … The gold overlaid with a red glaze was a good look, but the new homeowners wanted a brighter, more modern look.

Just look at how the diamond pattern on a white background changed the room! The heavy darkness is gone, and the feeling is totally modern. The black and white scheme goes beautifully with the new black countertop and white sink.

One not-so-great thing is that somehow we got two different run numbers. Different run numbers were printed at different times, and can be slightly different in shade, so cannot be used on the same wall. Luckily, we had enough paper that I was able to plot out which bolts to use on which walls, and the room turned out looking great.

This paper is by A-Street Prints, which is made by Brewster, a good company. It is a non-woven product with a high fiberglass content that is designed to strip off the walls easily and in one piece when it’s time to redecorate. The material is dimensionally-stable and will not shrink as it dries.

It can be hung by the paste-the-wall method, but I preferred to paste the paper. In a bathroom with choppy areas, this ensures that paste will get to every surface, and it also makes the paper more pliable and malleable, which is essential in a room like this with crooked corners and a curved wall (not shown).

This wallpaper was bought from my favorite source for good quality, product knowledge, expert service, and competitive price – 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.

A Quarter Inch Can Make A Difference

When you measure a room that is to be covered with grasscloth, instead of figuring how many square feet need to be covered, it’s a better method to count the number of strips you will need.

The standard width for grasscloth is 36″. For this bathroom, I counted up how many strips of 36″ wide material I would need to cover the walls.

The only thing is, despite the manufacturer’s labeling, the material was actually 35 3/4″ wide. And the bigger problem is that two of my walls were exactly 72″ wide. If the wallpaper had been the traditional 36″ wide, I would have needed only two strips and would have had only one seam on each wall.

But that quarter-inch shortness in width meant that I would need three strips. I hated to cut that third strip of paper, because we were short on material, due to it having come in two different runs (read previous post).

In the end, though, it all worked out, and the room looks great. It’s a good thing that I checked the run numbers. And that I also didn’t assume that everything was as it usually is. I’m glad I measured the width of the grasscloth before I started to plot out how I was going to hang the room, and definitely before I went and cut up any of the paper.

More on Why Run Numbers Count

I blogged a few weeks ago about run numbers, which refer to all the rolls of wallpaper that were printed at the same time, with the same batch of ink. It’s important to use bolts all from the same run, because, as this picture shows, there can be slight color differences between different runs.

The paper on the right in the photo was the sample, and the piece on the right came from the rolls I used to do the job. In my opinion, the paper on the right is much prettier in color than the sample piece.

This is Thibaut #839-T-3144