Wallpaper hanging and stripping in Cornwall

Wallpaper is unforgiving. It shows every ridge, every unfilled hairline crack and every patch of loose old paint underneath it, and once it is up those faults are permanent. Older Cornish walls are rarely flat and almost never square, which is why lining paper is so often the right call rather than an upsell. A lined wall gives the finishing paper an even surface to grip, hides the small defects, and makes the next redecoration far easier because the paper comes off the lining rather than off the plaster.

Before any paper goes up, the wall is checked for damp, filled, sanded and sized so the paste takes evenly. On new plaster that means a proper mist coat first. On old painted walls it means washing off the grease and sanding back the gloss so the paste has something to hold.

A lot of our wallpapering jobs begin with taking paper off rather than putting it on. Woodchip, blown vinyl, and layer upon layer of paper that has been painted over are all common in older houses across Cornwall, and getting them off cleanly is a job in itself. We soak or steam, scrape, wash the old paste off the wall, and then deal with whatever the paper was hiding, which is usually cracks, old filler and patches of loose plaster.

One of our customer reviews describes exactly that job: wallpaper stripped from a four-bedroom house, walls prepared and painted throughout. Stripping is the part people underestimate when they price a job themselves, and it is also the part that decides how good the finish looks afterwards.

Pattern matching, keeping a true vertical in a room where nothing is plumb, and planning where the inevitable break in the pattern falls are what separate a papered wall that looks intentional from one that looks approximate. We set out the room before the first drop goes up, so the pattern is centred where you will look at it most, usually the chimney breast or the wall you see from the door, and the join lands in the least visible corner.

Feature walls are the most common request: one wall in a bold print or a textured paper with the rest of the room painted to match. Full rooms, hallways and stairwells take more planning and more time, particularly around the stairs, where drops are long and access is awkward. Murals and panoramic papers come in numbered panels and need a perfectly level start, so the setting out matters even more.

Weight, paste method and whether a paper is washable all matter more than the pattern in rooms that see steam, sunlight or small hands. Paste-the-wall papers are quicker to hang and easier to remove later. Traditional paste-the-paper papers stretch as they soak and need more skill to match. Heavy vinyls stand up to kitchens and hallways; delicate papers do not.

We are happy to hang a paper you have chosen and bought, and to tell you honestly before you order whether it suits the room. If you send us the paper's details we can also say how many rolls you will need, allowing for the pattern repeat, which is where most under-orders happen.

Most wallpapering is part of a bigger redecoration: the feature wall papered, the other walls and ceiling painted, and the woodwork done to match. Doing it as one job means the colours are chosen together, the order of work is right (paint first, then paper, then the final woodwork coat), and the room is only out of action once.

If you are unsure whether a colour will sit with the paper you have chosen, the colour visualiser on this site is a quick way to try the wall colours around it before buying samples.