Wallpapering is not difficult, but it is unforgiving. Paint can be recoated; wallpaper cannot be un-hung once the paste has grabbed, and every mistake stays exactly where you made it for the next fifteen years. The good news is that the failures are predictable and almost all of them happen before the first strip goes up: a wall that was not primed, a first line that was not plumb, a paper that was not booked. Get those right and the rest is a rhythm you settle into by the fourth strip.
What's in this guide
- Tools and materials
- Step 1: Prepare the wall
- Step 2: Prime or size
- Step 3: Plan the layout and plumb the first line
- Step 4: Cut and label the strips
- Step 5: Paste the wall, or paste the paper
- Step 6: Hang the first strip
- Step 7: Smooth, butt the seams and trim
- Step 8: Inside and outside corners
- Step 9: Outlets, switches, windows and doors
- Step 10: The last seam and the clean-up
- Stairwells and high walls
- Peel-and-stick: what changes
- Removing wallpaper later
- The mistakes that ruin a wallpaper job
- Frequently asked questions
Before anything else, work out how much paper you need and order it all in one batch. Wallpaper is printed in production runs and the color shifts measurably between them, so a roll bought three weeks later to finish a wall will not match and there is no way to correct it once it is on the wall.
Work out rolls, strips and cut length for your exact room
Wallpaper Calculator →Tools and Materials
Most of this list is cheap. The two items worth spending on are a decent smoothing tool for the paper you have actually bought, and a knife that takes snap-off blades, because a dull blade tears wet paper and a tear cannot be repaired.
- Layout. Tape measure, pencil, a 4 ft level or a self-leveling laser, a long straightedge, scissors.
- Smoothing. A smoothing brush for uncoated, delicate or embossed papers; a flexible plastic smoother for vinyls. A plastic smoother will burnish or scratch a delicate paper, so match the tool to the goods.
- Trimming. A snap-off blade knife and a 10 to 12 in broad knife (taping knife) to cut against. Buy more blades than you think you need.
- Seams. A seam roller — for smooth papers only. Never on an embossed paper or grasscloth.
- Pasting. A pasting table or any long folding table, a paste brush or a short-nap roller, and a water tray if the paper is pre-pasted.
- Cleaning. Two buckets, several clean sponges and a stack of lint-free cloths. Change the water constantly.
- Materials. Wallpaper primer or sizing, the adhesive the manufacturer specifies, and a small tube of seam adhesive for touch-ups.
- Access. A stepladder for normal rooms; a stair platform or an adjustable-leg ladder with a scaffold plank for a stairwell. Drop cloths everywhere.
Use the paste the manufacturer names. Heavyweight and vinyl papers generally want a clay-based or heavy-duty adhesive; lightweight papers want a cellulose or starch paste; non-woven "paste the wall" goods want a paste-the-wall adhesive. The wrong paste on a heavy vinyl is how you end up with strips peeling off the wall a week later.
Step 1: Prepare the Wall
Kill the power to the room at the breaker and take off every cover plate before you do anything else. Then get the wall to the condition the paper needs, which is flatter than most people expect.
Strip old wallpaper completely. Do not paper over paper. The old seams telegraph through as ridges, and the moisture in fresh paste reactivates the old adhesive so both layers bubble and lift together. It is a day of unpleasant work that saves you doing the whole room twice.
Wash, fill and sand. Grease and nicotine residue stop primer bonding, so wash with sugar soap or a TSP substitute and rinse. Fill nail holes, dents and open joints, then sand flush and dust off. Wallpaper hides far less than people assume — anything you can feel with a flat hand you will see through the paper, and a seam landing on a proud joint will lift. A papered wall wants the same flatness as one about to take a gloss paint, which is a Level 4 finish at minimum, and a Level 5 skim under a thin or pale paper.
Deal with texture. Light orange peel can sometimes be sanded out. Knockdown, skip trowel or anything with relief has to be skim coated flat and sanded. There is no paper thick enough to hide texture.
Sand glossy paint dull so the primer has something to key into, and let every repair cure fully. A patch that is still damp underneath will bubble the paper above it.
Skimming a textured wall first? Work out how much compound that takes
Drywall Mud Calculator →Step 2: Prime or Size
This is the step people skip and the one that decides whether the paper comes off cleanly in ten years or takes the wall with it.
Bare drywall is paper-faced. Hang wallpaper straight onto it and the adhesive bonds to that facing, so when the paper is eventually stripped it peels the face of the board off with it and you are skimming the entire room. A dedicated wallcovering primer or a sizing puts a sacrificial film between the two. This single step is the difference between a strippable wall and a permanent one.
Primer does two other jobs worth having. It evens out suction, so the paste does not get sucked dry in patched areas and stay wet on painted ones — uneven suction is a common cause of edges that will not stick. And a pigmented primer hides patch shadows that would otherwise ghost through a light paper.
Prime in a light neutral over a dark wall. Paper contracts a hair as it dries, and seams that open even a sixteenth of an inch over a dark blue wall produce a dark line at every joint. Over a pale primer the same gap is invisible.
Let the primer dry for its full stated time, usually a few hours. If you painted the room first, let the paint cure rather than merely dry — give fresh latex at least a couple of days, longer in cold or humid weather, before pasting anything to it.
Step 3: Plan the Layout and Plumb the First Line
Nothing in a house is plumb. Corners lean, ceilings sag, and if you hang your first strip tight to a corner every strip after it inherits that error and compounds it. By the fourth strip the pattern is visibly tilted and there is no way back.
Decide where the last seam lands before you start. A room is never a whole number of strips around, so there will be exactly one seam where the pattern does not match. You get to choose where it is. Put it in the least conspicuous corner — behind the door, or the corner you see last as you walk in — and work outward from the opposite side of the room.
Dry-mark the strip widths right round the room with a tape and a pencil before you cut anything. You are looking for seams that would land within about 2 in of a corner, a window edge or a door casing, because a 2 in sliver of paper in a corner is almost impossible to keep flat. If one does, shift your whole start point an inch or two and re-check.
Then draw the line. From your starting corner, measure out one strip width minus 1/2 in and mark a true vertical from ceiling to floor with a level or a laser. That half inch is the wrap that turns the corner. Use a pencil rather than a chalk line under a pale paper — chalk bleeds through.
On a feature wall or a chimney breast, ignore all of the above and center the pattern on the wall instead, working outward in both directions so the design is symmetrical and both cut edges land in the corners.
Papering a single feature wall? The layout maths is different
Accent Wall Calculator →Step 4: Cut and Label the Strips
Cut length is the wall height plus about 4 in of trim allowance — 2 in top and bottom — plus whatever the pattern repeat demands. Cut three or four strips at a time rather than the whole room, because wall heights change as you go round and you want to be able to react.
Cut the first strip, hold it against the wall to confirm the length and the pattern position, and then cut every subsequent strip by matching it to the previous one on the table rather than by measuring again. Matching is faster and it cannot drift.
Number the back of every strip in pencil in hanging order and draw an arrow pointing to the top. A pasted, booked strip looks identical at both ends, and a directional pattern hung upside down is not something you fix — it is something you re-buy. If the label calls for reverse alternate lengths, flip every second strip now and mark it clearly.
Check the batch number on each new roll before you cut into it. Finding a mismatched roll on the table costs you nothing; finding it on the wall costs you the room.
Step 5: Paste the Wall, or Paste the Paper
Which method you use is decided by the paper, and the label tells you which. They are genuinely different jobs.
Paste the paper
Lay the strip face down on the table and apply an even coat of paste with a roller or brush, working from the center outward and taking it right over both edges. Then book it: fold the top end and the bottom end in to meet in the middle, paste to paste, edges aligned, and do not crease the folds.
Booking is not just a way to carry a wet strip. Paper absorbs water and expands across its width — up to around a quarter of an inch on a 20.5 in strip. If it does that expanding on the wall you get bubbles and seams that ride up; if it does it in the book, you hang it at its final size. Leave every strip booked for the time the label states, commonly 3 to 10 minutes, and time it with a clock. Strips booked for different lengths of time end up different widths, and that shows at the seams.
Pre-pasted paper
The adhesive is already on the back and water activates it. A water tray works, but it reliably under-wets the middle of a rolled strip; sponging clean water onto the back on a table is more even. Then book it exactly as above. Many professionals apply a thin coat of paste as well, because factory pre-paste tends to be weak right at the edges, which is where you need it most.
Paste the wall
Non-woven papers are dimensionally stable, so the paste goes on the wall and the paper hangs dry. Roll adhesive onto an area slightly wider than the strip, hang, and recoat the wall for the next one — do not paste ahead of yourself. No table, no booking, no expansion, no waiting, and a fraction of the mess. If you have a choice between two papers you like equally, take the paste-the-wall one; it is the single biggest reduction in difficulty available to a first-timer.
Whichever method you use, keep paste off the face of the paper. Wipe it with a clean damp sponge as you go and change the water every few strips. Paste left to dry on the surface dulls the finish and shows up permanently in raking light.
Step 6: Hang the First Strip
Unfold only the top half of the booked strip and leave the bottom folded. Take it to the wall with about 2 in of excess lapping onto the ceiling.
Align the edge to your plumb line, not the pattern to the ceiling. The ceiling is not straight; the line is. Slide the strip into position — a pasted strip will move for a minute or two, which is exactly what that time is for — until the edge sits on the line for its full height.
With the top set, brush or smooth from the center outward and downward, pushing air toward the edges. Then release the bottom fold, let it drop, and repeat down to the baseboard.
Spend as long as you need on this one strip. Every other strip in the room references it, so an eighth of an inch of lean here becomes an inch by the far corner.
Step 7: Smooth, Butt the Seams and Trim
Smoothing. Work from the center out and the top down, driving air toward the edges. Use a smoothing brush on uncoated, delicate or embossed papers and a plastic smoother on vinyls. Small bubbles almost always disappear as the paper dries and shrinks — leave them alone for 24 hours before you decide they are a problem.
Butt the seams. Never overlap them. A butt seam means the edge of the new strip just touches the edge of the last one, with no gap and no ride-up. An overlap is a permanent ridge that catches every bit of side light, and on vinyl it will not even bond, because vinyl does not stick to vinyl without a specific vinyl-over-vinyl adhesive.
Push the strip into contact, do not stretch it. Place the new strip a hair away from its neighbor and slide it in with the flat of your hand. Stretching paper to close a gap works for about six hours; then it shrinks back as it dries and the seam opens wider than it started.
Seam roller. Wait 10 to 15 minutes so the paste has grabbed, then run the roller lightly along the seam. Do not roll embossed papers, grasscloth or any textured goods — the roller flattens the relief permanently and squeezes paste onto the face. On those, press the seam with a damp sponge or your fingertips instead.
Trimming. Hold the broad knife tight into the ceiling line and cut along its edge with a sharp blade in one continuous pull. Snap off a fresh blade segment every two or three cuts. This is the most important habit in the whole job: a dull blade drags and tears damp paper rather than slicing it, and a torn edge at the ceiling cannot be repaired. Trim at the baseboard the same way, then sponge the ceiling, the woodwork and the paper face clean before the paste sets.
Step 8: Inside and Outside Corners
Never wrap a full strip around an inside corner. Corners are not plumb and they are not straight, so a wrapped strip goes out of true, wrinkles in the angle and pulls the next strip off vertical.
Instead, measure from the last seam to the corner at three heights, take the largest of the three, add 1/2 in, and cut the strip lengthways to that width. Hang it so that half inch wraps onto the next wall. Then plumb a fresh line on the new wall and hang the offcut piece over the wrap, matching the pattern as closely as it will go. You will lose a little of the design in the angle and nobody has ever noticed.
That half-inch wrap is the one place in the whole job where an overlap is correct. On a vinyl paper, either double-cut the two layers with a straightedge and peel out the waste, or bed the overlap with vinyl-over-vinyl adhesive.
Outside corners get wrapped about 1 in and pressed down hard, because that edge is the first thing a vacuum cleaner or a shoulder will find. If the corner is badly out of true, wrap only a quarter inch and start a fresh plumbed strip on the return to cover it. A dab of seam or border adhesive on the wrapped edge is cheap insurance.
Accept a pattern break at every corner. A slight mismatch tucked into an angle is invisible; a pattern leaning across a flat wall is the thing people actually see.
Step 9: Outlets, Switches, Windows and Doors
The power stays off at the breaker and the cover plates stay off until the paste around the boxes has dried.
Outlets and switches. Hang the strip straight over the box as though it were not there. Then feel for the opening, make a small X-shaped cut across it with a sharp blade, fold the flaps back and trim flush to the edges of the box. Do not attempt to cut the hole before hanging — you will not place it accurately, and the pattern will not line up either side. Do not push paper down into the box or behind the device.
If you want the plates to disappear, paper them with an offcut. Cut a rectangle about an inch larger than the plate, line up the pattern with the wall around it, wrap the edges to the back, and cut the switch opening and screw holes from behind.
Windows and doors. Same principle: hang the full strip over the opening, then make a diagonal relief cut into each corner of the opening so the paper can fold. Press it into the reveal or against the casing, then trim against a broad knife with a fresh blade. Change the blade more often here than anywhere else, because these are the cuts people look at closely.
Step 10: The Last Seam and the Clean-up
The final strip will not match its neighbor. It was never going to — you decided that back in step 3 and chose where it would happen. Butt it, trim it, and move on.
Then go round the room with clean water and a clean sponge and remove every trace of paste from the paper face, the ceiling, the baseboards and the casings. Dried paste is dull, slightly tacky and shows up in side light for the life of the paper.
Let it dry slowly. Keep the room at a normal temperature, close the windows and do not point a fan at it. Drying wallpaper too fast is the single most common cause of open seams, because the paper contracts faster than the adhesive can grab. Twenty-four to forty-eight hours is normal.
Check the seams after an hour and press down any that have lifted. After that, leave everything alone until it is dry. Then fix what is genuinely wrong: a small open seam takes a dot of seam adhesive and a light press; a stubborn bubble gets a razor slit along a pattern line, a little paste worked in with a syringe, and a smooth.
Roll the usable offcuts and put them in a closet with the batch number written on them. A scald mark or a torn corner five years from now is a twenty-minute repair with matching paper and a full re-paper without it.
Stairwells and High Walls
A stairwell is the same job with two extra problems: the drops are enormous and there is nowhere safe to stand.
- Sort access first, and do not compromise. Never put a ladder on stair treads. Hire a stair platform, or use an adjustable-leg ladder with a scaffold plank running to a step-up on the landing. Two people, always.
- Hang the longest drops first, while you and the room are fresh. A 16 ft pasted strip is heavy, floppy and wants to fold onto itself.
- Book long strips concertina-style — a series of short folds rather than two big ones — so you can release a section at a time as you work down.
- Plumb a line for every strip on a stairwell wall, not just the first. You are working a long way from your reference and errors have a lot of height in which to grow.
- Have a helper support the bottom of the strip while you set the top. The weight of wet paste on a long drop will pull a strip out of position on its own.
Peel-and-Stick: What Changes
Peel-and-stick is a different material with different rules, and treating it like traditional paper is why people are disappointed by it.
- The surface has to be right or nothing else matters. It bonds reliably to a smooth wall painted in a cured satin or semi-gloss. It does not bond to flat or matte paint, to bare drywall, to texture, or to paint that is less than about two weeks old. If you are painting first specifically to take peel-and-stick, choose the sheen deliberately — our paint sheen guide covers which finishes give an adhesive something to hold.
- No paste, no booking, no expansion, and no drying time. That also means it will not shrink into a tight seam the way pasted paper does.
- Peel the backing 12 in at a time from the top and squeegee down as you go. Removing the whole backing first produces a self-adhesive disaster.
- It is repositionable, but only for the first few attempts. The adhesive tires with each lift, so get the top edge on the plumb line right the first time.
- Seams may be an exception to the butt rule. Many peel-and-stick manufacturers specify a small 1/8 to 1/4 in overlap, because the material can shrink slightly and butted seams then open. Follow the instruction printed on the roll rather than the general rule.
- Expect 3 to 5 years, not 10 to 15. It is genuinely good in a rental, a nursery or a temporary scheme, and a poor choice for a hallway or anywhere it gets touched.
- Removal: warm it with a hairdryer and pull slowly at a shallow angle, keeping the peeled section folded back close to the wall. Pulling straight out at 90 degrees is what lifts paint and drywall facing.
Removing Wallpaper Later
Removal is score, soak, scrape, in that order, and the only real technique is patience. Force is what damages walls.
- Try dry-stripping first. If the paper was labelled strippable, lift a bottom corner with a putty knife and pull slowly at a shallow angle. Well-primed walls give up whole lengths in one piece. Peelable papers release their face layer and leave a backing paper that still has to be soaked off.
- Score lightly. A perforating tool opens the surface so water can get behind it. Pressed hard it gouges the drywall underneath, and every gouge is a patch later. Light pressure, several passes.
- Soak, wait, soak again. Hot water with a proprietary wallpaper stripper — or a capful of fabric softener per liter — applied with a pump sprayer or sponge. Leave it 15 minutes, wet it again, then scrape with a broad knife held at a shallow angle.
- Use a steamer for stubborn or multi-layered paper, keeping the plate moving. Held in one place it over-wets and softens the drywall face itself.
- Wash off every trace of old paste. New paint or new paper applied over residual adhesive will not bond, and old paste reactivates under fresh paint as a blotchy, slightly glossy patch.
- Repair, prime, and reassess. If the wall was never primed under the original paper, expect torn drywall facing and a skim coat. That is the cost of the step somebody skipped.
The Mistakes That Ruin a Wallpaper Job
- Papering over old wallpaper. Seams telegraph, fresh paste reactivates old adhesive, and both layers bubble.
- Skipping the primer or sizing. It works fine now and destroys the wall on removal.
- Hanging the first strip to a corner instead of a plumbed line. The error compounds across every strip that follows.
- Overlapping seams instead of butting them. A permanent ridge, and on vinyl it does not even stick.
- Stretching paper to close a gap. It shrinks back as it dries and the seam opens wider than before.
- Inconsistent booking times. Different soak times give different strip widths, which shows at every seam.
- A dull blade. Snap a fresh segment every two or three cuts. Torn wet paper is not repairable.
- Rolling the seams on an embossed paper. Flattens the texture permanently and pushes paste onto the face.
- Letting paste dry on the face. Dull patches that show forever in raking light.
- Forcing it dry with a fan or an open window. The classic cause of seams opening overnight.
- Mixing batch numbers. Two runs of the same pattern are not the same color.
- Peel-and-stick over flat paint or texture. It will be on the floor within a month.
Get your roll count, strip count and cut length before you order
Open the Wallpaper Calculator →Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to prime the wall before wallpapering?
Yes, on anything except a previously papered wall in sound condition. A wallcovering primer or sizing seals porous drywall so the adhesive does not soak in unevenly, and it puts a sacrificial layer between the paste and the paper facing of the board. Without it, stripping the paper later tears the drywall face off and you are skimming the whole room. Papering straight onto bare drywall is close to permanent.
Can I hang wallpaper over existing wallpaper?
It is a bad idea. The old seams telegraph through as visible ridges, and the moisture in fresh paste reactivates the old adhesive so both layers bubble and lift together. Strip the old paper, wash off the residual paste, repair and prime the wall, then hang. It costs a day and saves doing the room twice.
What is booking wallpaper and why does it matter?
Booking is folding a pasted strip end to end into the middle, paste to paste, and letting it rest for the time on the label — commonly 3 to 10 minutes. Paper absorbs water and expands across its width by up to about a quarter of an inch. Booking lets that happen off the wall, so you hang the strip at its final size instead of watching it grow into bubbles and ridden-up seams. Time every strip identically, because different soak times produce different widths.
Is paste-the-wall better than paste-the-paper?
For a DIY job, yes, clearly. Non-woven paste-the-wall papers are dimensionally stable, so there is no soaking, no booking, no expansion and no pasting table — you roll adhesive on the wall and hang the paper dry. It is faster, far less messy, and it removes the two steps where beginners most often go wrong. If you are choosing between two papers you like equally, take the paste-the-wall one.
Should wallpaper seams be butted or overlapped?
Butted, always, on traditional wallpaper. The edges should just touch with no gap and no ride-up. An overlap leaves a permanent ridge that catches side light, and on vinyl it will not bond at all without a vinyl-over-vinyl adhesive. The two exceptions are the half-inch wrap at an inside corner, and peel-and-stick, where many manufacturers specify a small 1/8 to 1/4 in overlap because the material shrinks slightly.
Where should I start hanging wallpaper?
Against a plumbed vertical line, not against a corner. Choose which corner will carry the one seam where the pattern cannot match — behind the door, or the corner you see last entering the room — and work away from it in both directions. Mark your line one strip width minus 1/2 in from the starting corner, so that half inch wraps around it. On a single feature wall, center the pattern instead and work outward.
How do I wallpaper around outlets and switches?
Turn the power off at the breaker and take the cover plates off first. Hang the strip straight over the box as though it were not there, then cut an X over the opening with a sharp blade, fold the flaps back and trim flush to the edges of the box. Never cut the hole before hanging — you cannot place it accurately and the pattern will not line up. Paper the cover plates with a matching offcut if you want them to disappear.
How do I wallpaper an inside corner?
Do not wrap a full strip around it. Measure from the last seam to the corner at three heights, take the largest figure, add 1/2 in and cut the strip lengthways to that width. Hang it so the half inch turns onto the next wall, then plumb a fresh line on that wall and hang the offcut over the wrap, matching the pattern as closely as it goes. Corners are never plumb, so a wrapped strip throws every strip after it out of true.
Why are my wallpaper seams opening?
Almost always one of four things: the room dried too fast, so the paper contracted before the adhesive grabbed; the strips were stretched into position instead of pushed; booking times varied between strips, giving different widths; or the wall was unprimed and sucked the paste dry at the edges. Fix an open seam with a dot of seam adhesive and light pressure once the wall is fully dry — and next time, close the windows and turn the fan off.
Can I hang wallpaper over a textured wall?
Not directly. Texture telegraphs straight through the paper and the adhesive only makes contact on the high points, so the seams lift. Light orange peel can sometimes be sanded flat; knockdown, skip trowel or anything with real relief needs a full skim coat, sanding and priming first. The target is the same flatness you would want under a gloss paint.
How long does wallpaper take to dry?
Twenty-four to forty-eight hours in a normal room. Do not try to speed it up. Keep the windows closed, leave the heating at its usual setting and keep fans off the walls — drying too fast is the most common reason seams open, because the paper contracts faster than the adhesive can grip. Leave small bubbles alone during that window; most of them pull flat on their own.
Does peel-and-stick wallpaper hang the same way?
No. There is no paste, no booking and no expansion, but the surface requirements are stricter: it bonds reliably only to a smooth wall in cured satin or semi-gloss paint, and it fails on flat paint, bare drywall, texture and fresh paint. Peel the backing 12 in at a time from the top and squeegee down as you go, and follow the roll instructions on seams, since many brands specify a small overlap rather than a butt joint. Plan on 3 to 5 years of life, not 10 to 15.
How do I remove wallpaper?
Try dry-stripping first — strippable paper often lifts from a bottom corner in whole lengths if the wall was primed. Otherwise: score lightly with a perforating tool (pressed hard it gouges the drywall), soak with hot water and a wallpaper stripper, wait 15 minutes, soak again, and scrape with a broad knife held shallow. A steamer handles stubborn or multi-layered paper, kept moving so it does not soften the drywall face. Wash off all residual paste before you paint or re-paper.
Can one person hang wallpaper alone?
In a standard room with 8 or 9 ft ceilings, yes — booking makes a pasted strip manageable single-handed and paste-the-wall goods are easier still. A stairwell is different: long drops are heavy, floppy and need someone supporting the bottom while you set the top, and the access equipment alone makes it a two-person job. Do not attempt a stairwell from a ladder standing on stair treads.