Innovative Use of Wallpaper Mural in Master Bedroom Closet

The mural was to go in one wall, but that wall had several corners and turns.

Don’t be distracted by the mirror on the left, which is reflecting clothing and dropcloths. The focus is the beautiful etched-looking mural!

Before.

I love the way the trees creep along the wall and in between the mirror and door moldings.

Close-up.

Here is a picture of the mural as shown on the company’s website. Both the homeowner and I expected that the trees would reach up higher, and would be visible over the mirror and door. I was disappointed that the company printed it too short for those treetops to be visible over the door, but the homeowner was OK with it.
In the end, it worked out nicely, because the homeowner wanted another area covered that I had not measured for, and the lack of trees above the doors meant that I was able to pull that off. More on that in another post.

The manufacturer is Rebel Walls ( rebelwalls.com ), and I like their material and quality a lot. Their murals are custom-sizeable, too, which is a bonus.

This popular pattern is called Bellewood .
It’s a non-woven material and you can paste the paper or paste the wall to install.
The home is in the Memorial Villages area of Houston.

Serena & Lily Feather Visually Enlarges Powder Room

This has got to be one of the smallest powder rooms I’ve worked in. Bland and boring, too.

People think that wallpaper will make a room look smaller. But in actuality, it visually pushes the walls away, making the room feel larger. The white paper also bounces light around better than dull painted walls, which brightens the room and makes it feel bigger.

It has a slight raised ink texture.

Feather by Serena & Lily is sure popular, and I’ve hung it many times, mostly in this navy / denim . S&L makes nice wallpaper.
The home is in the Villages area of near-west Houston.

Soft Geometric Accent Wall in Mother In Law’s Suite

Headboard accent wall before. Textured wall was skim-floated and sanded smooth, then primed. Now it’s ready for wallpaper.

Finished.

Closer look.

Detail. The seams were invisible. The lines on this paper are raised a bit, so there is a 3-D effect.

I hung this non-woven wallpaper by the paste-the-wall method. Here I have rolled the strips backward, to prevent the decorative surface from hitting the paste on the wall. When I’m at the top of my ladder, I will take off the elastic hairband and let the paper unfurl down to the floor. It’s rolled so the top of the strip comes off first.

I have measured the wall and noted where the center point is, then determined where I want my first strip to fall. The black box in the foreground is my laser level, and you can see the vertical red line it’s shooting at the wall, which is where I am going to line up my first strip.

Positioning the wallpaper strip along the vertical laser line.

This muted geometric pattern is in the Jaclyn Smith Home line by the Trend division of Fabricut. It was mighty nice to work with, and will hold up for years until the family is ready for a change of decor. Then, the polyester-content non-woven material is designed to strip off the wall easily and in one piece.

The home is in the Memorial Villages neighborhood of Houston.

Freebirds!

Birds free of their cages – what a perky pattern! This is in an upstairs bathroom of a home in the Memorial Villages neighborhood of Houston. The bathroom had dark blue cabinetry, and the homeowner wanted something to coordinate with that (instead of repainting). The blue notes in this wallpaper certainly fill that bill!

This wallpaper pattern is by Thibaut Designs, 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

Similar Color, But More Uplifting Pattern

The original wallpaper in this rear powder room / pool bathroom of a home in the Memorial Villages neighborhood of Houston was very dark blue with tiny black dots on it – from a distance, it looked like a solid color. It was an interesting pattern, but didn’t have personality of its own, so needed artwork to set it off.

This new pattern is very similar in background color, but the upward-moving foliage, accented by the beautifully painted hummingbirds, add a whole lot of movement and character to the room.

The leaves are a shimmery metallic champagne sort of color, and the hummingbirds have a mesmerizing iridescence; they almost look like photographs.

The stained glass window, which had been a bit of an odd duck – mostly because of the baseball in the center – became an asset when the wallpaper went up, because the colors of the birds miraculously matched the colors in the window.

Because the dark paper was printed on a white substrate, I used chalk to color the edges, so that white would not peek out at the seams.

This paper is by Harlequin, a British company. It is on a non-woven backing, and could be hung by the paste-the-wall method, or, as I did, by pasting the paper. It was nice to work with, but it could be creased easily, which would have made it difficult in a room that required more turns and intricate cuts and objects to trim around.

The 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.

David Hicks’s “Hexagon” in a Master Bathroom – Note the Freestanding Bathtub

David Hicks’s “Hexagon” pattern by Cole & Son is a well-loved design. I’ve hung it a number of times. Here it is in a large master bathroom in a very Mid-Century Modern home in the Piney Point (Villages) neighborhood of Houston.

Just this bathtub alcove, along with two small mirror walls over the his-and-hers vanities, received wallpaper.

Just the tub alcove by itself took me over six hours to hang (six single rolls). The complicating issues were unplumb walls, unlevel ceiling and soffit, a geometric pattern that the eye wants to see marching evenly across the walls, thick stiff paper that is hard to manipulate, ink that wants to crack and flake off the paper, complicated room lay-out, and … squeezing behind that tub to put wallpaper on the walls around it!

There are some spots where the pattern match is off a bit, and some areas where the crookedness of the walls is very evident (meaning that the pattern goes off-kilter). But overall, the room turned out great.

The design is called “Hexagon,” and is by David Hicks, designer for Cole & Son, a British company who has been manufacturing wallpaper for way more than a hundred years.

It’s a non-woven material that can be hung by the paste-the-wall method, but I chose to paste the paper, which made it more pliable, and which made it easier to get paste where it needed to be when going around the window areas and behind the tub.