Paddington Project

This project covered the wallpaper hanging in five rooms of a home in Paddington, W2. Each room took a different paper: a palm-leaf print in the entrance hall, a gold woodland mural in the sitting room, a marbled print in the cloakroom, and a chinoiserie mural and an elephant print behind the beds in two bedrooms.

Five papers is five different jobs. A mural, a large repeat and a small all-over pattern are each set out differently, and a paper with a pale or gold ground shows every flaw in the wall behind it.

Room by room

The programme ran for nine weeks on site and covered:

• Entrance hall: a grey palm-leaf print above the dado rail, cut around the front door, an internal door and a fitted cupboard
• Sitting room: a gold woodland mural across the whole fireplace wall, up to the cornice
• Cloakroom: a multicoloured marbled print on every wall, around the basin and mirror
• Bedroom: a teal chinoiserie mural of birds and blossom behind the bed
• Second bedroom: an elephant print behind the bed, running in bands level with the cornice

Getting the walls ready

Wallpaper shows every flaw in the wall behind it, so preparation matters more here than it does for paint. Walls were filled, sanded flat and sealed, then sized. Sizing evens out how quickly the wall pulls moisture out of the adhesive, which gives the time to slide each length into position and close its join before the paper grabs.

Murals and repeats

The two murals are single pictures made up of numbered panels. Each set was laid out in order first, and the wall measured so the image sits centred on it: around the fireplace in the sitting room, and behind the bed in the bedroom. Every join then has to meet edge to edge with the picture carrying across.

The elephant print runs in horizontal bands, so it has to stay level along the whole wall. A band that drifts by a few millimetres shows straight away against the cornice and the headboard. The palm-leaf paper in the hall had the most cuts, with two doors, a cupboard and a dado rail on a short run of wall.

The finished rooms

Each room has its own paper, finished the same way: joins closed, patterns level, and clean cuts at the cornice, the dado rail, the door frames and every fitting.

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