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.

Double Rolls, Single Rolls, Too Many Rolls

This homeowner was supposed to buy 10 single rolls of wallpaper. So that’s what she ordered – 10 rolls of paper.

But what she got was 10 double rolls of wallpaper. That’s 20 single rolls – twice as much as she needed.

Each of those bolts you see in the box in the photo is a double roll. Double rolls are a good thing. It is typical (and desirable) for two single rolls of paper to be uncut and rolled together as one double roll bolt. You usually get an extra strip of paper out of a double roll bolt.

This is the traditional American way of packaging and referring to wallpaper.

But … some companies use different terminology. These would be most all of the British manufacturers, as well as some American companies who are new to the wallpaper game, and who do not manufacturer their own papers, but get them from outside sources. Some of these are Serena & Lily, Hygge & West, Anthropologie, and middle-man retailers like Amazon, eBay, Wayfair, etc.

For these companies, what most of us call a double roll, they refer to it as single roll. It’s the same amount of paper, the same sized package – it’s just referred to differently.

If you’re not savvy and knowledgeable about the terminology of single and double roll bolts, and about the various companies that use conflicting terminology, you could end up with twice as much paper as you need – or, worse yet, with only half as much as you need.

This company, Graham & Brown, is based in the U.K. Hence their single roll is what I call a double roll. The company is very large, though, and has offices here in the U.S. – so they almost seem American. My client ordered her paper on-line, instead from my favorite source (see page to the right), and so there was no human eye overseeing the single/double roll conundrum.

Bottom line – she got caught in the conundrum, and ended up with twice as much paper as needed.

This is one reason I ask my clients to run their brand and pattern selections by me before they make their purchases. That way (hopefully), I can catch snafus like this, as well as figure in factors like pattern repeat, multiple drop matches, extra-wide material, and etc.