Quality Paper-Hangings in Tucson, AZ
Incorrectly estimating wallpaper is one of the most common mistakes in wallpaper projects. Oftentimes since wallpaper and paint tend to get bundled together, people use their paint-estimating techniques on wallpaper. This tends to under-estimate materials since it doesn't adequately account for pattern repeats and usable drops per roll. I'm sure every experienced paperhanger has ended up having to try to save the day by hiding partial pieces from roll ends with horizontal seams behind doors or in inconspicuous places—it rarely works out well.
In this How To, we're going to cover how to guarantee you'll have enough material for your project to look great. But word to the wise, it's still best to have one to two extra full length drops per room in case of manufacturer defects, new material orders not matching the correct dye lot, or for repairing damage down the road.
Before getting too far into the weeds: here's a little shortcut for simple rooms that you want papered with standard residential materials packaged in imperial or metric rolls (on average, you get 22 sqft per roll):
Select a prominent feature in the pattern and use this to measure the vertical repeat length.
The repeat length in the figure to the left is 20.5in.
Let's assume this material is 27in wide and each roll is packaged in 27ft lengths (an imperial roll).
Start by determining the ceiling height. From an inside corner measure out the material's width and mark it with a pencil. Be sure not to use a pen as the ink could stain. Continue with full-widths, tallying the number of wallpaper drops needed.
Since a drop of wallpaper needs to consider the pattern repeat, we'll need to know how many patterns are required for each drop to match. To do this divide the ceiling height by the pattern's vertical repeat length and round up to the nearest integer.
Multiply the number of patterns per drop by the vertical repeat length to get the length of each drop.
For a wall with an 8ft 9in ceiling (105in):
Since the wallpaper is packaged in 27ft rolls and we get 123in per drop, we're only able to get two full drops per roll.
To get the number of rolls we take the tally of drops and divide it by the number of complete drops per roll and round up to the nearest integer.
For a wall that's 10ft (120in) wide with a 105in tall ceiling that we plan on covering with a 27in wide material, we'll need a total of 5 full drops. In order to do this, we'll need to order three rolls:
If we weren't taking into account the pattern repeat or the usable drops per roll, we would've only ordered two rolls.
This results in two potential issues: 1) not enough material to match the pattern and 2) not enough material to cover the wall without horizontal seams. This unfortunately common occurence leads to people splicing together partial roll ends with horizontal seams to make up for not having ordered enough materials or simply not matching the patterns. It's a recipe for disaster.
Though this illustration provides the framework to measure for wallcoverings, there are still more complicated spaces that have arches, doors and windows, coved ceilings, deep inset window reveals, outlets to wrap into the pattern, etc. I do prefer to discuss the space before anyone orders materials just to triple check that we have everything covered (pun intended).
Feel free to reach out!
henry@papoir.com
(520) 640-4444