With wallpaper for tomorrow’s powder room in the foreground.
A soft tone-on-tone look , with a touch of tan mixed in with the grey, and lots of round visual movement .
The design has a sort of scratchy look to it, which makes it look something like an artist’s etching . The material is lightly textured , which I was hoping you could see in this photo, but mostly what’s showing is the printed design . If you could put your hand on it, you’d feel the texture .
This product is made in Germany , and judging by their instruction sheet , they must be planning to sell to every country in Europe , with Asia also in the mix!
The brand is Marburg Wallcoverings . It is a good quality textured vinyl on a non-woven backing . Flexible and easy to install . Designed to strip off the wall easily when you redecorate . The non-woven backing has a polyester content, so should stand up to humidity in this laundry / mud room. This was purchased below retail price from Dorota at the Sherwin-Williams in the Rice Village . She’s super at helping you track down your perfect pattern . Call first as her hours vary. (713) 529-6515 The home is in the Oak Forest / Garden Oaks area of Houston .
Before. Good colors. But nothing inspiring. Done. Boy, this paper really visually pushed the walls away and made the room look larger ! Easy on the eye tone-on-tone pattern , lighter colors , and a teeny bit of gold sparkle .
Note the 5/8″ high strip of wallpaper under the medicine cabinet on the left.
Because those faucet handles sit up so high above the backsplash , it’s likely that when people reach for the handles, water will get splashed onto the wallpaper . To prevent splashed water from wicking up under the wallpaper – which could cause the paper to expand and curl away from the wall – I ran a bead of clear siliconized caulk along the top of the backsplash . The color is skewed in this shot, but you get an idea of the tropical foliage and pattern scale . Toile is a French word for a sort of pen and ink drawing in one color on a background that may be colored or may not be.Close-up , showing a truer color . Note the palm trees and the monkey . This material has a woven -look textured surface , and it mimics fabric . I almost felt like I was install ing linen , instead of wallpaper . The brand is Rasch , a company out of Germany . Their papers are consistently nice to work with. This one was unexpectedly thin and flexible . It’s textured vinyl on a non-woven substrate . The vinyl makes it durable and stain-resistant , and the NW makes it easy to remove later when you’re ready to redecorate . The seams are positively invisible. This powder room on the first floor just off the home office / study comes complete with a shower . Just for fun – one of the obstacles in this room was this rain shower head – sticking out right where I need to be on my ladder , and keeping me from reaching those walls . On top of that, the faucet handles also stuck out much further from the wall than most do. While priming the walls, as I was climbing down from the ladder , my clothing actually got entangled in the handles and – turned on the water ! Yes, I got a shower at work today ! The home is in the Woodland Heights neighborhood of Houston .
The homeowner very much loves this simple, tone-on-tone shore bird pattern for her dining room – just the top , above the chair rail / wainscoting. Here I’m plotting where to best situate the pattern on the wall , between the chair rail and ceiling , while keeping the most important pattern elements and motifs intact . (no cutting off birds’ heads at the ceiling , nor at the wainscoting ) I’m also checking the pattern match . It quickly became evident that the pattern match, as laid out by the factory, was incorrect . Match it at the bottom (by my thumb ), but as you move up , the pattern goes a little out of whack . This is actually not all that bad , and is considered acceptable – the industry standard allows for up to 1/8″ – 3/8″ mis-match . Hand-trim screen-print materials such as this are particularly notable for pattern mis-matches . For the record, they’re also known for curling edges , puckering , waffling , and other issues that make them difficult to hang , as well as questionability as to how long they’ll perform on your wall before wanting to resort to that curling at the seams . More pattern mis-matching . But the situation got worse . These high-end screen prints often come with an unprinted selvedge edge that has to be trimmed off by hand , with a straightedge (the blue metal thing ), a razor blade – and a steady hand. If the trim guide marks printed on the material by the company are ” off ,” then you’re supposed to ” trim to the pattern .” This means that you find the design element on the left edge of the paper and then find the corresponding element on the right side, and place your straightedge so that your trim cuts will result in the two edges matching up perfectly. (Or at least within that 1/8″ -3/8″) At this point, the white lines in the design – let’s call them ‘grapes’ – are abutting my blue straightedge , and should meet up perfectly with the corresponding white lines on the grapes on the opposite side of the subsequent strip of wallpaper. But, unfortunately, with this material, that didn’t work. If I lined my straightedge up with the pattern design elements , as in the photo above this one, by the time I moved down a few feet , as you can see in this photo , the pattern begins moving away from the straightedge . The white grape outlines do not butt up against my straightedge. The likely reason is that this material has been printed on the bias . That means that the artisan at the factory got his screens out of whompus , for lack of a better term. ” Trim to the pattern .” OK. So here I’m placing my straightedge at 1/8″ away from the ” hook ” in this design . Still the same distance from the “hook.” But the white lines are starting to move away from the straightedge. Here they’ve moved farther off. With this design, from a distance , you could maybe live with the white lines not meeting up perfectly. But what you couldn’t find acceptable is that the tan area between these white elements would be growing wider diagonally as you move both up and down the wall. Look at the photo. You can see the tan area growing larger . But it gets worse as it spreads farther … As that tan section grows wider like a “V” or a wedge as you move up or down the wall, it additionally pushes the design motifs at the top of the ceiling or at top of the wainscoting either up or down along the horizontal lines of the ceiling and wainscoting . So not only do you get a widening tan line between each seam , you also get the birds’ heads moving up or down from where they’re supposed to be positioned below the ceiling or above the wainscoting . I spent an hour and a half trying different placements and trimming methods . I knew the client loved this pattern and that she was willing to accept reasonable flaws in the pattern match and positioning. But even given that, I wanted her to have a good looking dining room – not one with uneven spacing between strips, or grossly irregular positioning along the horizontal lines in the room. I even consulted with several (five!) “high-end” installer buddies of mine. No one had a ” tip ” for making an improperly printed design fall correctly on the wall. In fact, all five of them said it couldn’t be done. I determined that this material was unhangable. As mentioned, I tried to find an installer buddy who could make this work and get this client’s dining room done in time for Thanksgiving dinner. But no one wanted to take it on. I don’t know if the manufacturer will replace the paper or refund the $ spend. Manufacturers are usually keen on saying that “it’s the installer’s fault .” I can say that I’ve had similar issues with Meg Braff papers in the past. The homeowner really loves this pattern. It’s possible – but not assured – that purchasing the same design but in a different run will yield a better factory printing job. Just a note that printing defects , curling seams , wrinkling / quilting , and more, are somewhat common with hand-screened wallpapers . And here’s another reason why I’m happiest when clients stick with middle-of-the-road, or slightly upper priced , wallpaper options . Email me and request my Info Pack (or see the link on the right) for more information and brand name recommendations. Sad to bow out and leave this client with an unpapered room, and no viable solution or direction . But better that than to take on something that I can’t assure will look good. I hope she tells me what she ends up doing and how all this turns out.
A lot of my clients are choosing designs that harken back to the turn of the (last) century, particularly by William Morris. A lot of those are made by higher-end companies, and the material can be hard to work with. So I was thrilled when my favorite wallpaper sales person, Dorota, showed me these new books at her Sherwin-Williams store in the Rice Village. British Heritage is by Wallquest , a brand I like a lot. Below are room-set photos from those books.This is the very popular Strawberry Thief by William Morris. I’ve hung it before, and have it coming up again soon in the Heights ( Houston ). Arts & Crafts designs are very rhythmic and stylized. Some, like this, have a lot of color and impact.Others, with muted or tone-on-tone color pallets, are more subdued.Revival is another wallpaper selection book with designs of the same theme. A Street Prints is by Brewster, another great company. Most A Street Prints are on a non-woven , paste-the-wall substrate, which makes them quite user-friendly and affordable. CFA Voysey was a designer of the same period. I would say he was far ahead of his time, with some patterns reminiscent of MC Escher, and others bordering on … well, sort of psychedelic. Very progressive for the 1880’s! He continued to design through the Art Nouveau ( 1920’s ) and Art Deco ( 1930’s ) periods. I have his Bat & Poppy in my powder room. Search here to see photos. The fluidity here speaks of the Art Nouveau style. Alphonse Mucha was a European artist known for his elaborate theater and advertising posters in this style. I was lucky enough to have seen a fabulous exhibit at the Taft Museum when I was in Cincinnati for a Wallcovering Installers Association annual convention.
Not all Sherwin-Williams stores have wallpaper books, so call before you head over. Dorota isat the 2525 University store. This store has more wallpaper books than any other in Houston. Her hours vary, and someone may have checked the books out, so call before you head over. (713) 529-6515
I hung this subtle tone-on-tone wallpaper in a hall bathroom in the Montrose area of Houston 10 years ago. It’s still in perfect shape! The homeowners have done an amazing job of avoiding splashes and hand prints. I love the slight ‘ raised ink ‘ texture.
The homeowners of this newish home in the Bellaire / Braes Heights / Willow Meadows area of Houston like it’s serene, monochromatic look. But they wanted something with more color and eye appeal on this focal wall in the dining room.
They chose this tone-on-tone 4-panel mural by Phillip Jeffries, screened on silk on a paper backing. The soft and whimsical design is called “Wish” – remember when you were a kid and blew the fluffy seed pods off of dandelion stems?!
A mural is pleasing to the eye, in part because it is one scene, and doesn’t have the repeating design motifs that a typical wallpaper pattern has.
I particularly like the way the design mimics the look of the chandelier. These are little things that visually pull the room together. And the homeowner did it without hiring a decorator!
The silk material was bonded to a thin paper backing. The first day, I primed the wall and then hung a liner , a special paper that will cushion the silk wallpaper and provide extra “grab” to hold the seams in place. I let that dry overnight, and hung the mural the second day.
The mural comes in a set of four panels. Each panel came 36″ wide, but there was a selvedge edge that had to be trimmed off by hand with a straightedge and razor blade, reducing the width of each to 33″.
This wall’s width required 21″ of a fifth panel. The mural is printed so that the left side of Panel 1 matches up with the right side of Panel 4. So the homeowners simply needed an additional Panel 1 (which became the fifth panel, last on the right), to cover their wall.
The mural was 11′ high, but this home’s wall was only 9′. So I rolled all the strips out on the floor and plotted out which were the most important design elements to keep, and which we could afford to lose. I cut off about 16″ from the top, and another 8″ or so from the bottom.
Silk is a natural material, and so there are color variations between panels, and even within the same panel. I hate these color variations in grasscloth, but in this silk material, I think they enhance the look. It looks like there are real strips of silk fabric laid on the wall – and that’s exactly what there is! In the close-up shot, you can even see nubs of the silk fibers here and there.
This wallpaper pattern is by Phillip Jeffries, and 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.
The original viny pattern was hung by me 20+ years ago, in the dining room of a home in West U (Houston). (Still in absolutely perfect shape, I might add. 🙂 ) This was a very popular look back then – but the homeowners (who are now empty-nesters) were ready for an update.
They chose this tone-on-tone pattern in a fluid, uplifting design. It reminds me of a movie theater marquee back in the 1930’s Art Deco era.
This wallpaper has a slightly textured surface. It is made by York, and is in their Sure Strip line. It is designed to strip off the wall easily and with minimal damage to the wall, when it’s time to redecorate.
This product is pre-pasted, which means it has adhesive on the back that is activated by water. Since the paper has a textured surface, I didn’t want to run the paper through a water tray, so instead I sprinkled water on the back and then used my paint roller to spread the water to all areas of the back of the paper. I added a bit of clear wallpaper paste, to augment what was already on the back.
Booked and allowed to sit for 3-5 minutes in a plastic bag to prevent drying out, and it went up beautifully. Sure Strip is one of my favorite papers, both to work with and for longevity on your wall.
“Fantasia” is a fanciful – yet soft – pattern for this toddlers’ playroom in the West University neighborhood of Houston. The homeowners decided to have this put on just one wall, but the tone-on-tone hue is soft enough that it would work well on all four walls without being overwhelming.
This wallpaper pattern is by Boras Tapeter, a Scandinavian company that features a lot of whimsical designs. It was a non-woven material, and I hung it using the paste-the-wall method … although I think it would have worked a bit better if I had pasted the material.
It 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.
The color of this new wallpaper isn’t much different from the color it was painted originally. But the little bit of tone-on-tone pattern sure adds a lot of dimension and interest, while still maintaining a calm and serene feel.
The homeowner wanted paper on the ceiling, too. I usually don’t like pattern on the ceiling, but this one is so muted, I think it looks great.
The home is located in the Galleria / Tanglewood area of Houston. The paper is in the SureStrip line by York, in the Waverly design collection. It was nice to work with, and is thin and will hug the wall and stay nice and tight for years to come.
The paper 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.
I always love to see wallpaper featured in national magazines, so I’m thrilled that Southern Living has a spread honoring this beautiful wall treatment.
In the first photo, the fluffy dandelion seed heads seem a little busy to me, but they sure impart a fun and uplifting feeling to the walls of this breakfast room.
The second photo shows a muted tone-on-tone pattern that forms a soothing backdrop to a bedroom.
The last picture is back to fun – it’s faux chicken wire. Just what Joanna Gaines might order to top off her popular “modern farmhouse” look.
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