Wallpaper has come back into everyday use in London and Surrey homes, and not only as a single feature wall. Hallways, bedrooms, cloakrooms and studies are all being papered again, often in heavy, textured or wide-width papers that look superb hung well and unmistakably poor hung badly. The difference is rarely the paper and almost never the paste. It is the wall.
Paint sits in the surface and can be coaxed into softening a slightly imperfect wall. Wallpaper lies across it. Anything proud shows as a shadow or a shine, anything hollow shows as a slack area that catches light differently, and anything unstable eventually lifts and takes the paper with it. Worse, defects tend to gather at the seams, which is exactly where the eye goes. So the preparation is not a preliminary to the job — it largely is the job.
Assessing the walls you actually have
Before any decision about paper, we look at what is on the wall and what it is made of. A skimmed plasterboard wall in a recent extension, a lath-and-plaster wall in a Victorian terrace, and a wall that has already carried three generations of paper are three different starting points.
- Soundness: tapping and pressing to find hollow plaster, blown patches and areas that will not hold an adhesive bond.
- Existing coatings: whether the wall is bare plaster, emulsion, an old oil-based or heavily sheened paint, or a previous paste-stained surface — each needs a different treatment before paper will hold.
- Porosity: new plaster and filled patches drink paste unevenly, which pulls lengths off at different rates and shows as open seams.
- Moisture: any damp reading, staining or salting is investigated for a cause before anything is hung, because paper over damp will lift and can discolour.
- Geometry: how plumb the corners are, how level the ceiling line runs and whether the walls bow — all of which decide where the first length is set out.
Removing old paper properly
Stripping is patient work and it is worth doing thoroughly. Old paper is removed with steam and scoring rather than pulled off dry in strips, because dry-tearing lifts the plaster face with it and turns a straightforward job into a re-skim. Vinyl papers often have a top layer that peels away leaving a backing behind; that backing is not a lining paper and should not be papered over, however tempting it looks.
Once the paper is off, the residue matters. Old paste left on the wall stays water-soluble, softens when new paste is applied and destroys adhesion, so the wall is washed down and allowed to dry. Where a wall has been papered many times, stripping frequently reveals what the paper was quietly covering: hairline cracks, patched sockets, previous poor repairs and, occasionally, a wall that genuinely needs re-skimming. It is better to find that at the start than to discover it as a ridge running through a hung pattern.
Filling, sanding and the case for lining paper
Filling for wallpaper follows the same discipline as filling for paint: the right filler for the defect, overfilled slightly and flattened back rather than left proud. Sanding then brings repairs level with the wall, and a hand run across the surface is a more reliable test than the eye. Grit and nibs left on the wall telegraph straight through thin papers.
Lining paper is the step people most often want to skip, and the one that most often saves a job. A good-quality lining, hung horizontally so its joints never coincide with the finish paper's seams, gives an even, uniformly porous surface across a wall that may combine old plaster, new filler and patched repairs. It absorbs a little movement, it evens out minor undulation, and it lets the finish paper expand and contract predictably. On period walls, on any wall with a patchwork of repairs, and under most delicate, wide or premium papers, lining is the difference between a wall that reads as one plane and one that reads as a map of its own history.
Sizing and sealing
Sizing seals a porous wall so the paste stays workable rather than being sucked away the moment the length touches the surface. It also lets the paper be slid into position for pattern matching instead of grabbing on contact, and it makes life considerably easier for whoever eventually strips the paper again. New plaster and freshly filled areas particularly need it. On surfaces that are the opposite problem — glossy, sheened or previously oil-painted — the wall needs abrading and an appropriate primer so the paste has something to grip.
Why pattern matching and seams depend on the surface
Hanging is a setting-out exercise as much as a craft one. Corners in older houses are seldom plumb and ceilings seldom level, so the first length is plumbed rather than aligned to the corner, and the pattern is planned so that the inevitable break falls in the least conspicuous place — behind a door, in an internal corner, above a doorway — rather than in the middle of the main wall you look at from the sofa.
That planning only works on a sound, even, uniformly porous surface. If the wall has soft and hard areas, lengths dry at different rates and the pattern shifts fractionally between them, so a match that was perfect when hung is out by a hair once dry. If the surface undulates, butt seams open or overlap because the paper is travelling over a longer path in places. Strong geometrics and stripes, such as the striped paper above, are the most demanding of all: any drift is measured against a straight line and is instantly visible. Murals and wide-width photographic papers make the same demand for a different reason — the image runs across several drops, so the whole wall has to behave as one flat plane.
What skipping preparation actually causes
- Open or curling seams as unevenly absorbed paste dries at different rates along the joint.
- Bubbles and blisters where the paste could not bond to residue, dust or a sheened coating.
- Visible ridges and shadows where filler was left proud or sanding marks were not flattened.
- Whole lengths lifting from damp or unstable plaster months after the work looked finished.
- Pattern drift that grows across the wall, ending in a mismatched final drop in the most visible corner.
- Damage to the plaster face when the paper is eventually stripped, because the wall was never sized.
Choosing paper room by room
Hallways and stairwells
Hallways take knocks from bags, buggies, bikes and shoulders, so durability matters more than in any other room. A tougher, wipeable paper — or paper above a panelled or painted dado — survives family life far better than a delicate flat-printed one. Stairwells also raise a practical point: hanging safely and accurately above a staircase needs proper access, and the long uninterrupted drops show any lean in the wall, so setting out is done carefully from a plumbed line rather than the string of the stairs.
Bedrooms
Bedrooms are the most forgiving rooms and therefore the best place for finer papers, softer textures and larger repeat patterns. There is less wear, less moisture and generally more wall available to let a pattern breathe. Chimney breasts, the wall behind a bed and the sloped walls of a loft conversion all work well, provided the setting out accounts for the wall being read as a whole from the doorway.
Feature walls, cloakrooms and studies
A single papered wall works best when the wall has a natural boundary — a chimney breast, an alcove run, or the wall behind a bed or desk — rather than stopping arbitrarily. Cloakrooms and small studies are ideal for bolder papers precisely because they are small and briefly occupied, though anywhere with a basin or steam needs a paper suited to moisture and careful sealing around fittings. Kitchens and bathrooms need more thought again, and are often better handled as a painted surface with paper limited to a drier wall.
Getting it right first time
What determines the scope of a wallpapering project is the condition of the existing walls, how much stripping, filling and lining they need, the size of the room, the paper chosen and its pattern repeat, the complexity of the detail around windows, alcoves and staircases, and how easily the space can be accessed and cleared — which is why we always look at the walls before advising. You can see how we approach wallpaper installation and murals, browse papered rooms we have completed, check we work in your part of London or Surrey, or ask for a free tailored quote. If the same room also involves painted walls or woodwork, our article on why surface preparation decides how paintwork looks explains how the two sit together, and where sprayed joinery is involved, spray painting versus brush and roller covers the order the trades should run in.