I spend much of my free time scrolling through decorating and design accounts on Instagram and Facebook, and I’m always amazed at the comments on photos and videos of rooms that contain wallpaper. Eye-catching, beautiful wallpapers are almost always well-received and generally loved by commenters. But there are always a lot of comments from people saying that they would never use wallpaper because it is so difficult to remove.
I understand it. I think we all understand it. Most of us DIYers have had the experience of removing wallpaper that was installed in the 70s or 80s. And it’s actually a nightmare to remove this wallpaper. They were often installed directly on bare, unprimed and unpainted drywall. To remove them, steamers and chemicals are required. And even then, sometimes it’s as if these wallpapers were installed with some sort of apocalypse-surviving polyurethane adhesive that requires days of scraping off one tiny inch at a time, if you’re even lucky enough to get that much off at once.
I remember our tiny little apartment had wallpaper like this, and instead of trying to remove the wallpaper, I ended up using my sander on the walls to remove any raised edges and then drywalled the uneven areas, sanded the mud, and then primed and painted the walls. There was no way I was going to spend a week or two completely stripping the wallpaper, which had probably been installed in the 70s, from the walls. You can see my entire process here.
But wallpapers are completely different today. Most of them are no longer pre-glued, so you can choose your own wallpaper glue. And the ones that are already pre-glued today are very easy to remove when you’re ready to redecorate.
I’m a big proponent of wallpaper. I think a wallpaper or a mural can decorate an entire room. It can take a room from “pretty” to “WOW!” make. When someone walks into our bathroom, the mural is almost always the first thing they comment on. I think our bathroom would be pretty without it, but it would be a bit plain. The mural takes it to the next level. This is the Sparkling Garden mural from Photowall.
I feel the same way in our bedroom. I would still be happy with our bedroom if I had just painted the walls a bold teal. But there’s something about the grasscloth, but there’s something about the grasscloth that takes it a step further and makes it look, for lack of a better word, more “designer.”
The walls in our bedroom are also the first thing people notice when they see the room. It’s a look that can’t really be achieved with paint, and it gives the whole area a much more special feel.
And now I have this beautiful mural in the entryway. I’ve liked this wall before, but there’s just something magical about the effect a mural can have in a room that you can’t really achieve with a painted wall. This is the Paradise Tropical Floral wall mural from Anthropologie (affiliate link).
And of course the mural in my studio is the star of the room. I can’t imagine this room without him.
Of course, if you’re really afraid of wallpaper or have a room where wallpaper just doesn’t work (and there are such rooms that I’m about to show you), you can always just use paint to achieve a wallpaper look. I did this in my studio bathroom. But most of us are pretty limited by our artistic abilities when it comes to achieving a wallpaper look with paint. Most of us limit ourselves to designs that can be done with painter’s tape, like I did in the studio bathroom. And that limits us to linear designs.
And then of course there is always the option of using a stencil, which is what I did in our music room. But even then, the design possibilities you can achieve with a stencil are fairly limited compared to the hundreds of thousands of wallpaper options available.
Our music room was my only experience with stenciling on the walls, and let me tell you, I found it much more challenging than putting up wallpaper. After this stenciling experience, if I had the choice between a stencil and wallpaper, I would choose wallpaper every time without question.
Of course there are rooms where I wouldn’t use wallpaper. For example, our breakfast room, which used to be an outdoor walkway that a previous owner closed off to create more interior space, always seems to be changing a little. This is partly because our house has a pier foundation and the ground in our area is constantly moving and shifting slightly. But I notice it more in this room than in any other. You can see the shift in the corners of this room where the paper in the corners (i.e. the paper that is applied before applying the drywall mud) is shifted and wrinkled.
All the corners in this room are like this. This is the corner opposite the one above, and it looks exactly the same. All four corners in this room look like this.
I would never use wallpaper that extends from one wall to the next around the corners in this room because the wallpapered corners would eventually look that way too. This is a problem with many older homes. But in rooms like this, wallpaper murals on a feature wall (if one exists) is still a viable option. Just make sure the wallpaper starts and ends at one corner and the corner is at the opposite end of the wall.
As far as types of wallpaper and glue to use, I prefer wallpaper that is NOT pre-pasted. It costs a little more because you often have to buy the glue separately (although some companies provide the glue with the order, such as my bathroom mural from Photowall), but I find it is much easier to work with.
If I use wallpaper that isn’t pre-pasted, I roll and brush the paste onto the wall and then apply the wallpaper. And if you are looking for a paste that is easy to apply and remove and makes removing wallpaper very easy, I can highly recommend Roman Pro-880. As long as you apply your wallpaper to painted drywall and allow the paint to fully cure, the wallpaper will come off very easily.
As far as pre-pasted wallpaper goes, the only type I’ve used in the last few years is Spoonflower’s pre-pasted wallpaper. Simply roll water onto the back of the paper with a paint roller, give it a few minutes to activate the adhesive, and then you can apply the wallpaper. And removing it is very easy. When I decided to remove the original wallpaper I designed for the studio and use a larger version of this wallpaper instead, the original wallpaper came off in entire sheets. It took me about ten minutes to remove the wallpaper from the entire 20 foot high wall.
I often get asked about peel and stick wallpaper, but I don’t like it. I will always prefer paste over peel and stick. The reason for this is that I always do my wallpaper projects myself, and when I’m struggling with large sheets of wallpaper on my own, I never get the paper exactly where it needs to be right away. With removable wallpaper, you have to remove it and try again to apply it exactly where you want it to go. This is much easier when you have someone to help you, but I never do that.
With paste it stays wet and slippery long enough for me to lay the wallpaper on the wall and then move it back and forth a bit until it’s exactly where it belongs. Of course, I don’t stick the entire strip of wallpaper on and then try to move it, because that’s not possible. But I have a small section applied (usually aligned with the previous piece) and then I can slide it around until it’s just right and then smooth the rest of the piece.
I’m a big fan of wallpapers. And I think there are so many people who would love to use wallpaper but have nightmares about having to try to remove the wallpaper in the future. I’ve seen comments from countless people who have sworn off wallpaper for this one reason alone. So I just want to encourage you that difficult to remove wallpaper really isn’t a problem anymore. The days of renting steamers, buying all kinds of scrapers, trying different chemicals, and even then only being able to remove tiny pieces at a time are a thing of the past. So buy this wallpaper! Hang the wallpaper! LOVE this wallpaper! And then don’t be afraid to remove the wallpaper when you’re ready to move on.
