Adding a Wallpaper Feature Wall

If you’re looking for a way to add some personality and interest to a room, consider adding a wallpaper feature wall. There are lots of great options out there, so you can find something that will fit your style and budget. Plus, it’s a relatively easy project that even beginner DIYers can tackle. So if you’re ready to take your décor up a notch, read on for some tips on how to create a wallpaper feature wall.

How to choose your wallpaper

I am a very neutral home decor lover but for our bedroom I found an amazing vintage French bed. This led me to want to give the bedroom a bit more interest. We did a feature wall in our office using peel and stick wallpaper which looked lovely but was a bit tricky to do. For this project we decided to go for paste the wall wallpaper. The beautiful pattern we chose for the wallpaper feature wall came from Photowall Sweden and is called Fairy Tale Botanic (gifted).

I wanted something romantic and floral and this fit the bill perfectly. Photowall has an unbelievable selection for every taste and you can order samples. Obtaining samples is a great idea as the colours can be slightly different in real life. The one that I chose had much deeper colours then it appeared online.

My suggestion when it comes to choosing your wallpaper is decide on the parameters first. For me I narrowed my choices down this way:-

• I wanted a romantic floral
• Have a washed out look
• Although I am a neutral lover I knew that for a floral wall there would be colour. To narrow my search I chose pink and blue as my major colours.

Once I entered these parameters in the Photowall search I found it a lot less daunting to choose. As I said they have a huge selection.

Choose your samples!

Order your favourite. Make sure to add the tool kit from Photowall, they provide everything you need to hang the paper. Each roll of wallpaper comes with wallpaper paste.

Preparing to hang your wallpaper

To make sure our wall was nice and smooth we filled in any holes and sanded really well. I then went over the whole wall with sugar soap wipes to ensure that everything was very clean.

How to Hang your wallpaper

The first thing we did was separate our wallpaper panels. This process is made very easy as the sections are clearly marked as shown in the below pictures.

I then ensured that they were stacked in a pile starting at the first panel we would need. This process saved a lot of time and removed the confusion about what piece was next.

Before you start hanging your paper you need to ensure that you have a good straight line to start with. We knew that the corner of our wall was not level so if we started there we would have problems. To avoid this problem we used a plumb bob and measured 400mm off the wall and made our starting point for the first sheet there. We used a long level and drew a pencil line to make it easier. The sheets are 450mm so this gave us 50mm to deal with the uneven corner. So the first sheet was lined up with the level line 400mm off the wall not the corner itself. Please note: this is a very important step particularly if your home is older like ours. It worked perfectly.

The next thing you will need to do is mix up your paste. The instructions say to add the contents of the paste packet to 4 litres of water and stir. We found we got a much better result doing it in small batches so we mixed 1/4 of the packet of paste with one litre of water. To do this I weighed the paste and divided by 4 – this gave me 65grams per litre. Doing it this way I found we had no lumps and the mixture was a lot better consistency.

You’re now ready to start pasting your first sheet. Ensure that you have all of the supplied tools handy along with a sponge, water and a dry cloth. We also found it handy to have some paper towel close by to wipe down the join tool as it did get a lot of glue on it.

Start by using the glue brush provided and painting glue onto the area for your first sheet, we extended this area by about 10mm so we knew the join would have enough glue. Line up your first sheet with the level line your drew, allowing some overhang at the top as show in the picture.

Smooth the sheets with the brush provided and roll the joins with the joint roller. This gives a beautiful finish and the seams are not visible at all.

Dealing with Obstacles

We had several obstacles to overcome while hanging this wallpaper.

• Two power outlets
• 1 window
• Decorative timber moulding

The first two obstacles were fairly easy to deal with you just need to take your time and cut slowly with the knife provided as shown in the picture below. Make diagonal cuts from the centre of the power outlet to the edge – four in total. Be careful not to over cut its better to have to cut a little more than go too far because its hard to cover that up.

All thats left to do is to trim away the excess from all the edges. This wallpaper is so far out of my comfort zone but I am beyond happy with it.

Have you ever tried doing wallpaper yourself? It’s a lot easier than you might think, and the results can be really stunning. If you want to add some interest and personality to your room without spending a fortune, try out our easy DIY wallpaper project. You can use any design or pattern that speaks to you, so get creative! We can’t wait to see the beautiful walls you create.

If you want some more inspiration for your master bedroom makeover have a look at my handbag storage solution.