Design Dilemma: Wallpaper VS Paint

With regard to this question that has been asked by one of our website visitors…well I’m inclined to go with paint. Someday your mind will change…you will get sick of the wallpaper and in my experience, some contractors won’t even quote a price for trying to scrape it off. I have heard some horror stories where friends have had to steam and scrape off the wallpaper. Instead, to be safe, I would stick with paint. Modern primers are pretty good – even painting over a dark colour is pretty easy.

High quality paint, in a tasteful color skillfully applied, is always classy and adds value to your property. Wallpaper rarely adds value no matter what you do. I find wall paper to be quickly outdated. As stated before it is a terrible mess and headache to remove.

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t might also depend on the social world you move in. I lived in New York for about 5 years and I have been to quite a few apartments on the Upper East Side in Manhattan, the core of the richest neighborhood in NYC, and 95% of them were at least partially wallpapered and it looked very nice; elegant, tasteful, just very old world, which is not really the way I would want to live.

Another reason to use wallpaper is functional. My parent’s house has walls that are literally held together by over 100 years of wallpaper. Even attempting to remove any of that would probably damage the structural integrity of the walls at this point. So every 10 years or so my mum has her paper guy put another layer up. Painting is just not an option.

It is not recommended to cover over with more wall paper. The more layers the harder to remove. If you have textured walls the texture will always show through. Not to mention how busy almost all of the prints are. With paint, it is the art and furnishings that define a space.

What are your thoughts on this question?