Wallpaper Hanging & Installation in London

Wallpaper hides nothing

That is the whole of it. Paint forgives a slightly imperfect wall; wallpaper draws attention to it. Every hollow, ridge and patch of unsealed plaster shows through the finished drop, and a seam that opens up does so months later, once the room is furnished and the client has stopped watching. So the preparation and the planning decide the result long before the first length goes up.

Modernus hangs wallpaper across Central and South West London, led by two founders who each have 15+ years of hands-on experience — full rooms, feature walls, stairwells and ceilings, in papers ranging from fine printed stock to heavy textured and specialist grades.

Rooms, walls and ceilings we paper

• Full-room installations and single feature walls
• Stairwells, landings and other tall or awkward drops
• Ceilings and alcoves
• Designer, textured, patterned and heavyweight papers
• Stripping and making good existing papered walls
• Painting of surrounding walls, ceilings and woodwork alongside the paper

From bare wall to finished drop

Strip and clean

Old paper comes off and the residual adhesive is washed away. Adhesive left on the wall is the single most common cause of new paper lifting or bubbling later, and it cannot be papered over successfully.

Fill, sand and seal

Walls are filled, sanded flat and checked for soundness. Patched, repaired and newly plastered areas are sealed — fresh plaster is porous enough to pull the moisture out of the adhesive before a drop can be positioned.

Size the wall

Sizing evens out how quickly the wall absorbs moisture from the adhesive. That is what buys the working time to slide a drop into place and match a repeat accurately, rather than fighting a paper that has already grabbed. It is a step that is often skipped, and skipping it shows.

Plan the drops before cutting

Where the pattern falls is a decision, not an accident. Drops are planned per room so the repeat lands sensibly against the main sightline as you enter, and the joins fall where they are least visible — not wherever the roll happens to run out. On a bold repeat or a mural, this is the difference between a room that looks designed and one that looks papered.

Hang, trim and finish

Each length is positioned, matched, smoothed out from the centre and trimmed cleanly at skirting, cornice, architrave and every socket and switch. Seams are rolled closed. The room is cleared down on completion.

Choosing and ordering paper

Quantities need calculating from the drop height and the pattern repeat, not the floor area — a large repeat can add significantly to what you need, and running short mid-room is a genuine problem because a later batch may not match. We can advise on quantities before you order.

We work either way. If you have already chosen and bought your paper, we hang it. If you would rather we sourced it, we can. Whichever way round, the quote sets out an estimated quantity per square metre, worked from the drop height and the repeat rather than the floor area.

Treat that figure as an estimate, because it is one. Paper behaves like any other material: a room occasionally needs an extra roll, and sometimes you finish with one spare. We aim the estimate as close to the real requirement as the measurements allow, and we would always rather you had a little over than ran short mid-wall on a batch that cannot be matched.

Where we hang

We hang wallpaper throughout Central and South West London, including Chelsea, Kensington, Notting Hill and Fulham, along with Putney, Paddington, Wandsworth, Wimbledon, Richmond and Kingston. It is frequently part of a wider interior decoration programme. There is more on the rest of our work, or send us the details and we will quote it.