Wallpaper installation tips from Brisbane’s experts

Forget your grandma’s stuffy floral wallpaper. Today’s high-quality paper and contemporary designs are chic and versatile – a unique and character-filled addition to any modern-day Queensland home.

If you’re thinking of installing wallpaper yourself, tread with caution. A few wrong moves, and you could end up with a lumpy, uneven, and crooked finished product. Proper wallpaper installation is relatively finicky and requires several specialised steps that ensure longevity.

If you’re ready to face the challenge head-on, take our advice. Here are our top six wallpaper installation tips.

Tip 1: Prep your walls

If you fail to prepare, prepare to fail. Before you unroll your paper, remove everything from your walls – art, window coverings, light fixtures, and so on. Fill in any holes or cracks and use 50-grit sandpaper to remove small lumps, bumps, and imperfections. Finally, cover the entire wall with your preferred wallpaper priming product.

Tip 2: Make sure you have enough wallpaper

Calculating how much paint to buy is pretty straightforward. Calculating how much wallpaper to buy is a bit trickier.

• First, measure the length and height of your walls.
• Check the height of your wallpaper rolls and compare it to the height of your walls.
• Finally, consider your wallpaper’s pattern. Let’s say you’re wallpapering a 4 m wall. The design you’ve chosen features a peacock, which repeats every 75 cm. You can fit five peacocks on the wall, with 25 cm remaining. If you want to centre the five peacocks on the wall, you’ll need to account for the 12.5 cm on either side.

Tip 3: Use a quality paint roller to apply water and wallpaper paste

Don’t skimp on your paint roller. If you use a cheap one, it’ll leave a nasty trail of fuzzballs on the back of your paper, which can prevent it from adhering to the wall.

Tip 4: Create a seam in every corner

It’s extremely difficult to achieve perfectly straight corners. Don’t stress – instead, create a seam by overlapping the first panel over the adjacent wall by a few centimetres. Then, use a seam adhesive product to glue down the second panel.

Tip 5: Be gentle with your wallpaper smoother

To achieve a picture-perfect, even surface, run a wallpaper smoother over the entire wallpapered area. Be gentle – if you apply too much pressure, you’ll squeeze out the paste or stretch the paper. Stretched wallpaper with too little paste will shrink when it dries, and you’ll end up with gaps between sheets.

Tip 6: Use a seam roller to set your edges

After hours of hard work and effort, the last thing you want is wallpaper that curls away from the wall. To prevent this, use a seam roller over each edge to seal them securely. Again, don’t be rough. Press too hard, and you risk stretching your paper.

Get expert wallpaper installation

Does installing wallpaper yourself sound like too much work? The Kraudelt Painting team is here to help. We know wallpaper, and we can help you achieve a flawless finish fit for the pages of your favourite interior design magazine. Get in touch today on 07 3829 5735 for a fast and accurate quote.