The Best Techniques for Hanging Wallpaper
Line a room with wallpaper and you have instant decoration.
Line a room with wallpaper and you have instant decoration. From blah to bold in a matter of hours, paper can push boundaries beyond what paint can do. It enlivens walls with textures or patterns or both—your choice. And as a bonus, it masks minor imperfections in plaster and drywall, too.
But as often as homeowners attempt to hang paper themselves, they rarely get it right, cursing their peeling seams and mismatched patterns—it's enough to drive you up a wall. Enter John Gregoras, a pro paper hanger from Somers, New York, with nearly two decades' experience. We asked Gregoras to demonstrate a few of his best wallpapering tips and tricks for pasting, hanging, aligning, and trimming. And, boy, did we learn a lot - everything from how he plans the layout to how he lines up the last seam. With this kind of insider know-how, papering just got a whole lot easier.
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Best Wallpaper Techniques Overview
Layout is the key when you're learning how to hang wallpaper. Paying attention to the order in which the paper goes up ensures that your pattern will stay well-matched and look straight. John Gregoras recommends working in one direction around the room to keep the pattern consistent.
But no matter how good your technique, the pattern between the first and last strip will rarely match up. For that reason, Gregoras always starts his job behind a door, papering out from the corner until he reaches the space above the door— the least conspicuous spot in the room.
Very often, the last strip of paper on a wall isn't a full sheet. So another wallpapering tip Gregoras uses is to always paper the corners with split sheets.
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