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Home Decorating

is peel and stick wallpaper hard to apply?

last year

I have a powder room off my kitchen that I would love to wallpaper with a bright fun pattern that would tie in my kitchen colors. The powder room has a pocket door and I think something colorful would be great since the door is always open.

The room is small, the walls are in fine shape. How easy is it to use peel and stick wallpaper? I’m imagining it’s like contact paper, which sounds like a nightmare to use. I imagine not getting it straight, having air bubbles or wrinkles, dealing with curled paper…

Thanks!

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Comments (5)

kbru53
last year
I did peel and stick wallpaper in my office with the help of my sister. Putting it up was quite easy, the difficult part was getting the repeat of the pattern to line up.
maggieq
last year
I did peel and stick wallpaper in the back of a display cabinet. It was just like contact paper - thin and prone to stick to itself if you are not careful. Because it is so thin, it will show every flaw, bump and lump on your walls. If you are going to the time and expense, use real wallpaper.
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Yes the moisture problem was over 20 years ago and it was not a burst pipe. The woman above us turned her sink on and then went to her bedroom and went to sleep and forgot about it. It's flooded and came down through the wall. This caused some minor swelling to the plaster and made the paint crack and peel. There is no sheetrock there what you see is beige paint underneath a layer of yellow paint. There is no existing moisture problem. It is simply a very ugly wall. I want to put something attractive that I can easily wipe down. Peel and stick seems like the best solution since it's easy to take away if I need to. If there is ever another leak or moisture problem the entire wall will have to be torn out and fixed by the owners of the property anyway. The amount of investment to do a peel and stick for this small area is $30. I am not about to go out and spend a stack of money on this wall when I don't own the property. A lot of this is really nice advice for someone who owned the property but that is not the case here. Surface is fairly smooth I was just worried that the areas of peeling paint would interfere with the adhesion of the peel and stick and was simply asking if I should put up some type of board first, smooth out the wall with putty or just go as is. That was really my only concern whether or not the peel and stick wood actually stick to this surface. Sorry if that wasn't clear in the original post
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I've recently installed a peel and stick mural on a textured wall (it is a nature scene so it's not a bad effect). I worked bubbles over to the seams with a wadded up washcloth. If you cut or poke a hole to release the air, like Izzy says, no glue needed.
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Meredith K
Original Author
last year
Interesting! I wonder if more expensive paper is thicker and easier to put on?
I also wonder if I can just get away with doing one wall, the one that’s seen from the kitchen…
cindylouhoog
last year
I have no experience with wallpaper but had no problems installing peel and stick paper above my 5” kitchen backsplash. I ordered from Spoonflower. The paper is thicker than contact paper and even when it sticks to itself, it’s easy to pull apart. The bubbles and wrinkles are easy to smooth out, they include a little plastic scraper. Pattern easy to match. It pulls right off to reposition. It doesn’t curl. My wall finish is mission with intentional imperfections and they do not show thru the paper. It can be removed for two years. Spoonflower has thousands of choices and can be customized. They also offer matching fabric (check on the scale, my fabric scale was much smaller). After a couple of months, there’s no damage to it behind the faucet where it gets splattered and then cleaned.

The most difficulty I had was working on top of the counter while fitting the corner and ignoring comments about that from my husband!
Meredith K
Original Author
last year
Thank you! That’s very helpful. I have been looking at Spoonflower- the stuff is beautiful and I love that you can get matching fabrics. It’s so expensive though, it would cost me nearly $1000 to do my 6x3 powder room. Even just doing an accent wall would be over $600

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