What we do
Wallpapering, including heritage and specialist papers
Hanging, lining and pattern matching, including heritage and specialist papers on walls that are anything but flat.
Wallpaper is unforgiving in a way paint is not. Paint will sit on a wall that is slightly out; paper shows it. A wall that leans, a chimney breast that is not square, a ceiling line that drifts — all of it turns up in the pattern, and by the time you can see it the paper is already on.
In a period house that is the normal condition rather than the exception, so the wall gets sorted out first. Lining paper where it is needed, filling and sanding where it is not, and the first drop plumbed rather than run off the corner — because in an old house the corner is almost never vertical.
Heritage and hand-printed papers bring their own demands. Batches vary, some papers expand as they soak and have to be booked for the right time, and a few cannot be touched with a seam roller at all. On a paper costing well over a hundred pounds a roll, knowing that in advance is most of the job.
How we do it
What the job actually involves
Prepare the wall
Filling, sanding and lining so the paper has something flat to sit on.
Plumb the first drop
Set from a plumb line, not from a corner that is out of true.
Match the pattern
Set out so repeats fall sensibly at the features, and joints land where they are least seen.
Handle the paper properly
Soak times, batch checks and the right tools for delicate and hand-printed papers.
Cut in and finish
Clean edges at cornices, panelling, sockets and switches.
Our work
Wallpapering
15 photographs from jobs we have finished. Tap any of them to see it full size.
Paper works particularly well in the rooms people worry about most — cloakrooms, stairwells and chimney breasts, where one wall carries the whole room.
More of what we do: Wall panelling, Hand-painted kitchens, Conservation restoration, all services