The Trouble With Wallpaper

Interesting article! Wall paper is fabulous when executed properly.

I have always loved wall paper and in the 70s used it fearlessly...however, now I feel a little afraid of it because it's so much work...I have to get over that!

I love a bit of wallpaper, but it does remind me of the bumpy chipwood stuff that my mum had on her walls when i was little! Im glad people are reinventing the old classic with up to date and quirky designs!

Aw, so much wallpaper-hate? While I can understand people staying away from it due to taste, why fear the work? My mother has been wallpapering friends' houses for years, to supplement the family income, and I followed her around, running errands underfoot. The key is to be very patient in your alignment, but it doesn't hurt to have the right tools, and at least one helper. Get a friend or family who has done it a bit and offer a nice meal out in exchange.

Wallpaper installation is definitely not an undertaking for a drunken Saturday afternoon unless one is performing the second act of a Dadaist manifesto. Wallpaper, like all things with hundreds of years of history spans every style of pattern and design from the super intricate to trompe l'oeil to designs that are supposed to appear to break the tradition of pattern. Ultimately to each their own. Redecorating is definitely something that breaks the monotony of a space, whatever the season. Changing up the walls has the power to alter the mood and tone and feel of a space. I often find that redecorating a space is a bit like changing locations. There's something daring about transformation.

I love wallpaper so it makes so irate when I see terrible examples of it, which seems to happen more often than not. Fortunately, there seems to be a bit of a wallpaper revolution beginning to happen and many beautiful examples are emerging from some pretty talented artists.

Oh the dreaded wallpaper dilemma. I am not a wallpaper person as I prefer painted walls instead. We bought a home 10 years ago where every room was papered - with paper from the 70's. I spent the better part of a year removing that paper and painting instead. When we moved into our new house, I painted every room and I'm pretty happy with the results. One of my sisters is a wall paperer and her house looks fabulous, but in my house give me paint or nothing at all.

Love them and so beautiful they are.

I suppose if you can find the perfect wallpaper for you and your tastes, it would be worth it to wallpaper a house. But until I find it, I'll just use paint. It's cheaper, cleaner, and easier to change if you need to.

The previous owners of our house left us enough of a wallpaper nightmare that I have a hard time thinking of it in a positive light. :-)

I often like the look of old, original wallpaper in a vintage home. Our first home had some pretty dingy, gross wallpaper...we decided to embrace the challenge. A challenge it was!!! Next time, I'll just leave it up!!

The scars left by seemingly endless wallpaper removal projects run deep & I have sworn off the stuff for good! No More! ;)

Ummm...

I'm not a fan of a whole wallpapered room but when used correctly it's really beautiful.

I prefer to use wallpaper as a crafting supply, and make envelopes, notebooks and gift packaging from otherwise unwanted remnants.

i've have one wall in the house papered with a beautiful graphic print - had someone much more patient then i put it up tho and i love it!

I hated wall paper until the early 90's when working with an interior designer in Philadelphia I was re-exposed the possible beauty of it. ...and it's short cousin Lincrusta.

Great for covering up imperfect walls!

I have never tried to put up wallpaper. I would definitely have to hire someone to put it up for me. I just love that Porcelain Blue Wallpaper.

While I'm not a fan of wallpaper (two large, slobbery dogs don't improve a papered surface) I'm at a loss to know why people regard it as such a challenge to put up. I spent a few years in my youth as part of a team of "lady decorators" & always found papering to be much quicker than painting, as well as much more satisfying. As with most decorating projects, correct & careful preparation is the key to a decent finish.

My experience with wallpaper is that I have loved having it on the walls while I loved the paper. However, when I no longer loved the patterns/colours/look, and that took quite some time, it was a hellish experience to get it off. Now everything is painted not because I don't love wallpaper but because I want to have the flexibility to be able to easily make changes when I want. Do not be fooled by the term "dry strippable", it still involves a great deal of work and mess. If you choose paper, choose wisely, have patience and be prepared for work at both the putting it up and taking it down stages.

Why try to remove wallpaper? In the home we had when I grew up we had wallpapers all over, and me and my sister used to draw on them, as a teenager I wrote quotes on them (as did my friends) and then my dad just re-wallpapered them or later painted them...without bothering to remove them...I know this can't be done foreover but it worked great for us!!! I don't know about the following owners :D

Awesome article!

My beige-grey realtor hubby prefers painted walls (preferrably white or beige) in case we have to sell the house - in fifty years. I think his nightmare is that he will come home and I will have decoupaged the walls. I might.

love wall paper but hard to remove, we used to use at home when i was littler..

love the article, thank you.

Hung many rooms of wallpaper. So much work. Put my son in my newly wallpapered dining room (years ago). He was sitting on a chair in timeout. Walked away for a second and came back to the darn wallpaper being kicked off the wall by an angry little man. lol Please no more wallpaper!

I have the fondest memories of green Damask like wall paper with pewter foil and a Fuzzy damask print! I adored it as a child and I could be found with my sister in the living room snuggled up against it reading books.. on the shag rug of course! In our kitchen we had more fantastic wall paper which my parents cursed over for a few day's while trying to put it up... my Dad might have said it was going to come to divorce if they didn't hire in help to get it put up ... with out finding it the follow the morning curled back up on the floor. What I would't give to have a wall in my house with the same paper .. Does anyone here sell vintage wall paper??? Not that I would actually have the patience to put it up!! Wonderful articale!

Wallpaper is back actually. And it's not the same nightmare to remove stuff from back in the day. People should not be afraid to try it! The new stencils they are coming out with are lovely too though!

Stenciling is a great idea and a much easier and less expensive project. Removing old wall paper tends to be a nightmare. I love painting, mostly because it can be changed so easily after a few years. Great post!

Anyone know of an easy way to get old wallpaper off the walls? It has been there for at least 50 years so it's pretty well stuck. It's also very faded. Quite a monumental task that we have to tackle at the old summer home we bought in Maine. Great house except for that. I have a picture in my mind of how it will look when we're finished, but the finish line is a ways off. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

Lining my kitchen cabinets with contact paper is a challenge that leaves me in a sticky, tangled mess....I couldn't imaging what hanging wallpaper would be like :-0

Neat article. I never knew it went back so long!

Awesome article!

I never tried wall paper myself, but I did paint my walls once before. It is a great option to make a change and add texture and colors to a room. It can be a bit costly compared to regular wall paintings. However, the wall paper has a very unique beauty to it. Would love to try out sometime. :)

For some reason, wallpaper makes me uneasy. Perhaps it's the memories between tacky yellows, high class, strange bubbling, and discolored walls behind. When done right, wallpaper can be gorgeous, I've just seen it more often the other way. White walls covered in gorgeous art is the way to go in my opinion.

"White walls, unrelieved by any color are relics of barbarism" - I kind of feel that way about the continuous use of white backgrounds and neutral items on Etsy's Front page. It is spring, time for change and action and growth!

I remember my mom and grandma struggling for hours with wall paper....I've decided that its not for me!

Having both installed and stripped off wallpaper a number of times, I can say neither is a pleasant task. I won't be doing it again unless I can hire a professional. In the meantime, I have a steady hand and can stencil if I want a decorated wall. I was fortunate enough a few years ago to move into a 60s ranch style house that had recently been painted in neutral colors. No ugly wallpaper to strip. Ever notice how the wallpaper in a house you move into is the EXACT opposite of your own taste?

There are so many beautiful wallpapers available these days. I've been meaning to install some in my entry for months now, I'm kind of afraid something will go wrong if I try to do it myself. The stenciling in the first photo is so pretty!

Wallpaper can make a dramatic statement in a room - I prefer only covering one wall rather than the entire room. Being a faux painter as well as an artist, I think a house should have a combination of mostly plain painted walls, a few faux painted for texture and then one room with a beautiful wallpaper. There are so many beautiful new papers out their! I simulate a lot of them with paint for my clients - that way there is never any stripping when they get tired of it.

Everyone I know who has put up wallpaper, me included, will never do it again. As with everything, the popularity of wallpaper comes and goes, but with such gorgeous stencils I'm surprised anyone would go the wallpaper route.

I actually love wall papering and have done it numerous times in my house and then years later taken it off and repainted, as with anything change is good, What you love and need in your houses changes as families change, kids grow up, rooms are repurposed etc, Really wall papering is not difficult, think in mathematical terms and be patient

I love wallpaper!

Very nice article. I think I saw a show not long ago talking about how important wallpaper was to the Victorians.

Funny I'm not overly keen on wallpaper I think it can dominate a room which can be a bad thing but done well I think its lovely!

When we bought our house, it had early 80's wallpaper in EVERY single room except the bathrooms. Nothing is worse than old, peeling wallpaper in a style that clashes with your own. First thing we did was hire professionals to remove it all. And guess what, they weren't happy about it removing it either! They wanted to texture and paint right over it. We were astounded to say the least.

Inner patience? What's that? I need to evolve further as a human being. Interesting article, and great pics!

I would love to try wallpaper in my house somewhere! Very intimidated by it though.

For me, I am finished with wallpaper. Don't like removing it when I want a change. Paint for me!

my grandparents had a summer house in Rhode Island where every room was wallpapered in the most amazing stuff! My favorite was a bedroom papered in a metallic silver stripe with red strawberries and flowers. The berries were slightly flocked, and then some crafty person had painted all of the lampshades and glass bedside lamps to echo the pattern. Instead of "matchy matchy" it just seemed like a magical feat of artful craftiness! They also refered to each room in the house by the theme or color of the papers, and that seemed quite fancy to me, at least when I was little.

I just came from an estate sale at a house straight out of the 70s! Shimmering green & yellow flamingo wallpaper in the bath, black & white velvet in the living room & bold chevron stripes in the bedroom! *swoon* :)

I've just finished removing 4 layers (!) of wallpaper from the hallway, somebody who lived here before just added one layer on another....but tomorrow I'm going to paint everything with yellow and orange......I saw wonderful wallpaper but very expensive, or at good price but very boring......for this time I'll work with paintbrush!...............

Great article. Wallpaper can add so much to a room. For the ones intimidated by the installation, you should check out Trendy Peas' wallpaper. Our wallpapers are printed on a peel and stick adhesive material that makes installation a bliss. No paste necessary, no mess.

Wallpaper! Nice! But it's too much work to tear out when you don't want to see its anymore !!

wall paper is really hard to apply and remove- but yeah when done right it has beautiful effects. I love the diamond pattern one in the first photo! :D

I love the look of wallpaper, but have had my share of DIY nightmare in taking it off the walls - not attaching it. To save future residents of my homes the same nightmares, any walls that were once papered are now just painted - and if I want more pattern, stencils will be my choice!

After picking old wallpaper off of walls for hours as a child, I grew up with the thought in mind that I would NEVER wallpaper a wall in my own home. Well, thoughts have changed! Really I can't imagine whats not to like about the gorgeous designs that have been cropping up! And with all the new tools and products its not such a headache to remove the stuff anymore. If I had had a clue how it would be now, I'm sure my wallpaper hate wouldn't have been!

When we bought our current house it had wallpaper in the kitchen and the bathroom, and we really didn't care for any of it. I was working on removing it and it wasn't coming off easy -- it's probably from the 1950s or '60s -- so I asked the advice of the carpenter we had doing some other projects, and he said he likes to just skim coat over it. His price was reasonable, and he did it in a couple of phases, so after the first coat, he popped any bubbles that formed and repaired them. It worked out quite well and we had nice smooth plastered surfaces to paint. In an earlier house, I pulled off some more modern wallpaper that was easy to remove, and it revealed a remnant of some 1940's paper with a car motif above the window. It was like an artifact, I loved it. The rest of the wall had the mottled and streaked look of plaster and left-behind paste, and I thought that looked really cool, too, so I didn't paint it! I intended to get some kind of translucent glaze to seal it and tint it all, but I never got around to it.

Corbu and Mr Wright were correct, white simple walls in all their glory are the way to go. That being said a bad white wall can be okay with a little extra texture.

I like the suggestion to use stencils instead of wallpaper, although I'm still a fan of white walls. The next person to buy your home could then just paint over them if it doesn't suit her taste. Whoever designed the wallpaper in my house when I first bought it was definitely a “degenerate” and a “rogue.” A dizzying number of dark green diamonds, accented by cheesy deer, trees and fallen logs. Really???

I love to rip it down - it's so satisfying! My grandmother's condo had a different wallpaper on every wall! Most of it there since the 70's. It was a challenge - we did leave some wallpaper that had been there for so long that it was back in style again.

I am a huge fan of the stencil as opposed to wallpaper. Too much work! I rarely see a wallpaper that I REALLY like. Stencils are much easier to customize and get exactly the look you want. The only place that I really like to use wallpaper anymore is in smaller areas - the back of a bookshelf, for instance.

Wallpaper, the very word makes me shudder! If only it were easier to put up and take off. After spending hours, days, weeks removing wallpaper in my house, I just can't see myself ever using it again. I like the gray and white design in the picture above though.

Although I had a not-so-great experience getting wallpaper off, I think it is a beautiful way to add character to a room. Fun read!

I love graphics in the home -thank you David Hicks! I enjoyed looking at the stencils and pondering paper or stencil? I think both have a place but stencil provides such a great easy on off option!

I remember visiting a friend and in her tiny bathroom, she would put a HUGE wallpaper pattern. I loved that! I ended up finding a pattern that had the same effect for my bathroom years ago ... and I still love it today! it is the only room in the house that I have wallpapered. I also LOVE the vintage wallpaper kits, you get a table and huge scissors and a wood tape measure. I use mine ( for display) all the time. LOVE the scrap wood wallpaper noted here!

Please help me find a vendor for the wall paper shown on the Etsy blog published 3-3-12,"The Trouble With Wall Paper" the story is by Chaps 675. The wall paper I am interested in is featured in , Under 10 examples of wall paper in the kitchen. It is picture #10. I have just the right wall for it. Thank you.

Class warfare always makes me think of the Dr. Suess tale about the star-belied sneetches. He certainly had a way of cutting through the muck to show us how silly our thoughts can be. :) Thank you for the interesting article!

As a decorative artist, I am not that fond of wallpaper, but some of my jobs are replicating wallpaper in a high use bathroom or taking elements from it to decorate a ceiling. Nice article though.

i think they whole 'taking down hideous wallpaper from the 80's for 2 weeks' situation scarred me for life.........no wallpaper for me.........ugh. haha ;)

I think wallpaper can be pretty tasteful if done properly.

Anyone who has encountered the dreaded dingy flowers and Pollock-esque patterns adorning their walls KNOWS that wallpaper is the Devil's work. I understand that wall patterns can completely transform a room, but the removal of decor from decades past will ruin the medium for life.

I am so happy wallpaper is making a comeback!

my only experience with wall paper is in our house, which was covered in the stuff when we first bought it! and it was ugly stuff, with vines on a brown background, and a mustard brown dotted pattern in the foyer. after all that, I'm not so sure how to handle the comeback of wallpaper, but the stuff in the first picture is nice :)

Thanks for the article! Great job. Wallpaper is a great accent.

Love wall paper in the powder room. Something dramatic!

I worked as a designer for a few years and was exposed to many gorgeous wallpapers. I had a professional paper my guest bath in the most gorgeous birdcage print and I love it! Growing up, my mom did her own wallpaper and I swore after watching her it was something I would never try to do myself!

Wallpaper can transform a whole room into an amazing space! I do agree that you should definately use a professional to hang as you really need someone who knows how to line up the pattern repeat so the drops run seamlessly! Come and have a look at our Wallpapers... We are featured in the images above :)

Well it certainly seems to be a love it or hate it thing doesn't it? I come down on the love it side and I hang the wallpaper myself. You need to be a methodical kind of person but the results are totally worth the effort. Wallpaper creates a far greater effect in a room that paint alone ever does, (and I am a fan of the white can!) and with more independent designers adding wallpaper to their repertoire the quality of papers and styles has increased dramatically. My favourites MissPrint and MiniModerns from the UK.

I cringe when I think back to nearly 18 years ago when I bought my first home and decided to wallpaper my bathroom with wide black and white stripes running from floor to ceiling and added a matching shower curtain, which apparently looked enough like the wallpaper that I once had to rescue a house guest that went to lean on it and fell into the bathtub. That lasted about a year and then I started taking it down and found there were probably 14 layers - the oldest was beautiful and probably applied somewhere in the early 1900's. I wish I could have saved it. Thanks for the very nice article. You really did your homework on this one as I recall some of the info from back when I was taking interior design courses in college, back then we were working with geometric prints and the classic country blue and mauve. Ewwww...

An interesting article. I have always liked great wall paper, vintage design and color. I like painted walls and knotty pine that you use to find on walls. Even though it is work to put wall paper up and take it off. I would much prefer the work than to have plain white sterile looking boring walls.

I still remember the wallpaper in mi bedroom as a child and the one in our living room. My parents have always had great taste and it showed in the smallest details such as the pattern of wallpaper. I do not think I would have wallpaper in my house today because it can be very exigent, but that does not diminish my opinion of this urban form of art expression.

I love cooking so much! As I take a little time to visit Gourmandia sites, I feel so glad because I discover a wide variety of recipes! This site has knowledgeable information about cooking recipes and cooking skills!

Love that yellow room!

Our NYC apt was built in 1908 as a glamourous hotel, The Babe himself lived here at one time. As we've renovated over the past years, peeling away the layers of time, we've uncovered greens and blues from the 70s, flowered print from 50s and in the smaller than small closets, a gorgeous violet print I would have loved to keep. I once sat with an elderly woman on a flight to Florida who reminded me when I noted the small closets that at one time, most Americans had 3 or 4 changes of clothes and no more than 2 pair of shoes...food for thought on this sunday morning.

I am loving all the new wallpaper out there! I'm almost obsessed! My walls remain white though...renting. But if I ever buy a house I think every room will have it!! I remember my mom wallpapering the kitchen and the bathroom, actually every room in our home had it. I had a beautiful peach floral in my room. I'm so happy it;s back!

We LOVE It, but it is not fun for a DIY first time project. My husband and I did the guest bathroom in 5 days with a fair bit of frustration thrown in. We hired a professional to do the master bath and they were done in two hours. Lesson learned Our favorite wall paper source is Cole and Sons in the UK, they've reissued the Fornasetti wallpapers - a FAVORITE!

Great article. Thanks for sharing. I love wall paper!

Wall paper is great, it has to be done right though! I have seem some garish rooms.

I've never heard of the word house-papering before. It leaves a great mental picture.

wallpaper as an accent wall, yes, wallpaper borders along the top of walls, never. that's where i stand on the issue :)

Working in historic restoration I've learned to LOVE wallpaper. I even enjoy removing it, ceilings and all. Many old homes that retain their beautiful (to me) imperfect plaster walls were meant to be covered and look better for the effort. If you've ever stripped off 100 years + of wall coverings you'll find a cultural encyclopaedia. You may also notice that for the wall ability to move and settle with the house as it aged, many plastered walls do not have meeting corners, instead there is a gap left. These may now be filled with modern flexible fillers and make the wallpaper look better and the job easier as well. The trick to the use of wallpaper in a century + old house is to avoid geometric patterns as often the ceilings and floor have shifted creating a nightmare if you are trying to match up horizontals lines. Verticals are easy if you use a plumb-bob first to determine a straight line. Always try to plan out the room (sheet to sheet) before beginning, in this way waste is reduced. Always lightly sand, then use wallpaper primer or a paint primer previous to wallpapering plaster. Always try to begin at a space that is not a focal point, and never, ever wrap a full piece around a corner and then attempt to hang another alongside it - instead wrap it, cut it off leaving a few inches, and then begin with a fresh piece, each and every corner, matching both pattern and your correct vertical drop for that specific wall as best as you can. The overall room finish effect will be far better and even. Another trick I've picked up is to avoid wetting pre-pasted paper. Been there, never again. Instead I've found that using modern paste activator (available inexpensively in gallon tubs) either rolled or brushed on leaves the paper FAR easier to handle with less tendency to rip or stretch when mounting it as it is relatively dry and far more stable. Use plenty of clean warm water with a very small amount of gentle cleanser to immediately remove extra adhesive and activator as you mount each piece, and have several sharp disposable box cutters, plus a good scissors close at hand. I love wallpaper! If anyone ever needs a hand or has a question please feel free to send a message. Anything old house is a joy for me to share in.

I like to take down the ugly old wall paper and leave the rough wall. Paint it and rough it up some more, sponging colors to enhance the unfinished look. It looks great. Or it can be painted over after a good priming. In my house I got rid of the old wallpaper doing these tricks. Interestingly enough, under the new walls of my kitchen are so many layers of wallpaper from the last hundred years that it ages the house like tree rings. The very bottom layer is turn-of-the-century, drawings of women in long frocks and fancy hats, and it remains locked in the wall forever. So weird.

Love this post...always use a pro for my wall paper! When I had my first apartment we were not allowed to paint or paper. Bought strawberry print in a border paper, trimmed bottom edge of four rolls, and used red thumb tacks to put up all around the big farm house kitchen! When we moved out I just removed the tacks and no one could tell the paper had been there! (~.~) Ellen

While I do love the look of some modern wallpapers, after having to remove a house full of it I'll never use wallpaper myself!

Wallpaper can also hide a multitude of sins in old homes: bucking, cracking, peeling plaster, water stains, even holes. This can be good for cash-poor home dwellers who want a fast fresh look, but bad for home buyers who may miss important damage. And wallpaper is a bigger nightmare to remove than to put up. Stencil, I say!

Interesting article! We just attempted our first real wallpaper installation, with the much-needed help of an expert-friend.... Although I'm very biased, I'd far rather stick to our interactive magnetic version! Thanks for sharing it as a 'related item' to the article.

Wallpaper is lovely and so underused these days. I do hang quite a lot of plates on my walls though too...

I love wallpaper as a feature, just on one wall in the room.

I heard a speaker once say something like this "the real test of your marriage is trying to wallpaper a half bath together..." I tend to agree-we use mainly paint to transform our home, our shop and our shop items. A great paint color makes a world of difference!!!

Luv me some wallpaper. Saw this thing on t.v. where you take a cool piece of fabric and dunk it in water and starch and smooth it out over a wall. Supposedly it stays up til you get it wet again. Someday I will own a house and be able to use the real thing but for now I am dying to try this!

As an interior designer I studied all of the ornamental arguments you referenced, I appreciate you explaining the theoretical thoughts that have moved our civilization through home decoration. It's amazing how much other people don't know about the history of the built world around them and I love to see mainstream articles that teach the who, what and why of design.

Hahaha! A degenerate for using wallpaper! Wow, 1908 :D

The horror is not in putting it up, it's in removing it. The previous owners of our house wallpapered our foyer, a huge staircase with 12 foot ceilings, a domed ceiling, and our upper landing in pink floral/bird wallpaper, and the thought of removing it all myself almost made me reconsider making an offer on the house. I've been working at it for three months with a steamer and a razor, and I've barely gotten three walls done. The beauty of paint is how easily it can be changed to switch up the feeling in a room or transition to new owners with vastly different tastes. Removing the paper is such a nightmare; it's backbreaking and tedious, and it makes a person seriously consider horrible alternatives like wallpapering over it or - God forbid - painting over it! All my experiences with wallpaper are horror stories, so you'll never see me use it. If I want pattern, I'll stencil - but all I'm fantasizing about right now is clean naked walls I can paint any color I want.

I love wall paper and can not wait to have my own house to cover the walls! I agree it is definitely a challenge... but I am ready to take it on.

I'm seeing a lot of wallpaper love! And yes, it can look great and not be so difficult to hang, you're right! My main problem with wallpaper isn't the hanging of it, it's when you want to change it! And LIVING in a house in the midst of wallpaper removal can be a real nightmare !(Especially if you have pets or kids to try to corral and keep away from the mess.) Like anything we do to our homes, making a decision that you think you'll be able to live with for a number of years is really difficult. I would strongly recommend that anyone who wants to hang some for the first time go out and try to find somewhere to volunteer their time trying to REMOVE some for someone first, so they know what they're getting into.

I love all the different designs and styles available in wallpaper. If it wasn't so hard to change up I would probably be their best customer.

At one time, based on the bits and pieces I've found during rebuilding my 1860 farmhouse, there was some gorgeous wallpaper here. But over the past 150 odd years, paper has been papered over, the last layer incorrectly hung with a 3/8 inch overlap on every single seam, and then it's been painted over countless times....the only way to remove it is taking down the plaster, which is the extreme in wallpaper removal, but is faster than removing it my more conventional methods, and allows access inside the walls for really nifty things like modern insulation. That said....I am still considering wallpapering the bath, vinyl wallpaper isn't nearly as difficult to remove as paper wallpaper.

My wall paper is from 1986!

I'd rather watch paint dry, than ever wallpaper a room. I always fear that I'll somehow, get wrapped up in the pasty paper. I'd hate to have my husband find me "mummified," by a Martha Stewart for Target print!

i would like wallpaper on one wall...as an accent wall

Ha! This article is so timely for me. Just today I began ripping off the wallpaper that has adorned my, (ahem), 1980's country kitchen. Wallpapering rooms was the rage back then but, right now, I'm hating it!

We're thinking of wallpapering just one wall of our studio, but it's a tough decision - what kind of colors, pattern and size won't be out of style in a couple of years, not to mention something that will be stimulating over the long-term. We might just go ahead and do some rag-painting instead, but I'm still holding out for some really nice, magical wallpaper!

My bedroom as a child had floor to ceiling wall paper. To my dad's credit, he hung tiny pale blue hearts above the chair rail and mulitcolored large hearts under it. My mom made matching curtains and bedspread. Thinking about wall paper always makes me think of that room and how loved I was to receive such hard work from them both. Wallpaper and orange shag carpet oh, things have changed.

I associate wallpaper with memories of my mother mumbling curses as she hung it up. I am in my mid twenties now and if I did find a wallpaper I liked, I would certainly be paying for someone else to hang it up. It is a task I have seen accomplished many times, but it is not as easy as it looks. There are lots of things to consider : the chimney breast, the curve of the staircase landing, that uneven floor in the pre-war house and always making sure the pattern is properly aligned !

Love it! Great ideas!

I am generally a diy-er but wallpaper has me shaking in my boots. I found this awesome wallpaper, but am going to use it as art instead of trying to hang it on the walls. I will leave that to the pros (or at least someone with better eyesight and a steadier hand)!

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