FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Almost all wallcoverings that are used in homes today fall into three categories and any or all of these may come in pre-pasted form:

• Fabric-backed vinyl
  
• Paper-backed vinyl
  
• Vinyl-coated paper
  

Before you can sell the right kind of material for the right application in the customer’s home, it is essential to understand these three materials since they easily comprise 90% of the wallpaper market.

Fabric-backed wallcoverings get an A+ for durability, scrubbability, and their ability to hide the surface imperfections that walls in older homes show. The walls in kitchens, baths, and hallways take the most beating in a home—food and grease, steam from showers, and banging from suitcases or vacuum cleaners can quickly take their toll if the material chosen is not up to rugged standards.

Choosing a fabric-backed vinyl is your best assurance that the installation will look great in 10, 15, even 20 years in areas that get wear and tear. When the time comes to remove this material, fabric-backed vinyl is the easiest to remove from a properly primed wall. Walls in older homes can have many problems that range from recurring stress cracks, many previously patched areas and multiple paint layers of questionable quality. Fabric-backed does the best job of handling these problems because it is flexible, it covers a multitude of sins without staining, and it takes little effort to remove one strip for a quick repair. If fabric-backed vinyl is so wonderful how come it isn’t used all the time? Mainly because it’s harder to get delicate prints on this material, although manufacturers are getting better all the time at making really fashionable looks in fabric-backed.

Paper-backed vinyl is suitable for most areas in the home. It is scrubbable and will handle general wear and tear almost as well as fabric-backed vinyl. The only area that may be questionable is in a frequently used shower area without an exhaust fan. Seams there may have a tendency to show in a year or two in this kind of bathroom environment because the paper backing absorbs moisture at the seam. Seams are much more likely to curl over time with paper-backed vinyls compared with fabric-backed vinyls. In some cases the paper backing and vinyl front sheet can separate from each other in a process known as delamination due to constant moisture. If you want your customer’s new wallpaper to look great for many years, use paper-backed vinyl in baths which are used less frequently and have a good exhaust fan to remove shower steam or in baths that are just so large that steam never builds up in them at all.

Vinyl-coated paper is exactly that—a paper that is coated in some way with a vinyl. Manufacturers tend to print intricate multi-hued florals and deep colored backgrounds on this type of paper. This type differs in construction from the other two types in that there is no sheet of vinyl laminated to a backing. Without a backing, this wallcovering type doesn’t do as good a job of covering up the wall’s inherent surface imperfections. If walls are rough, a lining paper can be used to correct this weakness (See below—“Blankstock and Lining Papers”). With darker patterns—forest green, navy or cranberry, for example— the vinyl-coated type often has an annoying tendency to burnish or become shiny in spots where you wipe with a damp rag or where kids love to drag their hands as they go up and down a stairway. You will notice that many juvenile papers are only vinyl coated and not vinyl sheet laminates, since manufacturers assume you will change the paper within a few years. Do yourself a favor and don’t even consider this type of material for areas that get wear and tear.

Selecting the right wallpaper or wallcovering for the customer---for our purposes the terms are interchangeable---can be work. Most times the books are not arranged by material type and you may have to be a detective to find out what you have in your hand. Ignore all labels on rolls that say “scrubbable” or “strippable” since they can be cruel jokes designed to dupe the unsuspecting consumer. (Manufacturers say that everything is scrubbable and strippable and it’s simply not true.) If you are searching for durability with a fabric-backed material, start by looking in the “Textures” section. Not too long ago you could start this search in the “Kitchens & Bath” section since all of those patterns were fabric backed vinyl. Not anymore. There are still fabric-backeds in Kitchen & Bath—but it must say so on the pattern you have selected.

When looking through “textures” books watch out for this: “Available in 54” and 27” widths.” 54” wide material is used for office spaces and 27” width material is for residential spaces. Smaller offices frequently use 27” width but rarely do houses use 54” wide material for reasons of installation price and simple logistics—often the installer can’t find an area in the house big enough to prepare 54” wide material. If your customer is shopping for a small commercial space, be sure that the material has the proper fire rating designated by the fire marshal in your area.

Don’t expect the paper-backed vinyls to jump out at you from the sample book shelves either. Pattern books can say “solid vinyl”, “solid sheet vinyl”, or even “luxury vinyl” instead of making it easy for you by saying “paper-backed vinyl.” The vinyl-coated type usually just says “vinyl wallcovering.” Sometimes material books don’t say anything and you have to put on your detective’s hat again. If you want to know if the material sample can stand up to shower steam and kitchen grease, perform this simple test: Place a medium damp sponge on the pattern side and let it sit there for 15-30 minutes. Then turn the paper over and look at the backside. If there is any indication of warping or dampness on the other side, the sample is not a sheet vinyl and I would not recommend it for a bath or kitchen.

PRIMING…THE MOST IMPORTANT STEP IN HANGING WALLPAPER

The following section on primers is here only to demonstrate the benefits of proper priming for wallcovering. Since there are so many varied primer types, wall types, and wallpaper types, specifying what primer to use is strictly in the domain of a knowledgeable, experienced professional.

Most people aren’t in the habit of reading the instruction sheet that comes in modern wallpaper rolls. But if you did, you would see that almost every manufacturer spells out in black and white that in order to hang their product properly the wall must first be primed with a “good quality primer.” If you happen to have any complaint about the wallcovering product later on, it will always come back to the question: 𠇍id you prime the wall with a good quality primer?” That in itself should be a good enough reason to properly prime the wall. But there are better reasons to prime with a quality primer than having the wallcovering manufacturer simply say, “We told you so.”

Priming promotes adhesion making it possible to hang on difficult-to-stick-to surfaces like glossy painted walls. Pigmented primers have a white hiding pigment which makes the entire wall uniformly white add that is very important in today’s world of wallpapers that are not 100% opaque. This whitening prevents the old wall color from—believe it or not--- showing through the new paper. Also white spackle or light-colored patching compounds against a dark blue or green paint underneath will show as a blotchy area after all the paper has dried.

Here’s something to consider: Wallpaper doesn’t stick to your wall, it sticks to the paint on your wall. Chances are excellent that the paint on your wall is some form of latex paint. Ordinary interior latex paints are not suitable for wallcovering installations without some sort of priming treatment. Latex paint is commonly in contact with the wet wallpaper paste for a day or longer during the drying process. During this time the latex loses its integrity and softens into a rubbery film. This softening can wreak havoc with the wallpaper installation because every good installation requires a sound, hard surface to hang on. As the wallpaper dries, it shrinks and can pull the weak, rubbery paint with it like stretching taffy. Even worse, a very porous latex can allow paste to travel all the way into the paper facing of your sheetrock making later removal an awful chore. Wallcovering primers, particularly wall protecting primers are specialty products designed specifically to prevent wallpaper paste from softening the latex paint on your wall and making the wallpaper become a part of your wall. By preventing this infiltration and isolating the paste right at the surface of your primer, it is ensuring that there will be no ripped up holes in your sheetrock when it comes time to remove the paper. It’s also important to remember that a great primer for painting purposes is not necessarily a great primer for wallpaper.

Don’t you mean “sizing?" What’s the big deal about "priming?" Sizing is what your grandmother did when she papered the plastered kitchen or bath walls. Plaster walls are almost indestructible since they are very much like cement, so Grandma didn’t need wall protection, she just needed to apply sizing, a thinned down wheat paste made from flour, to make the wall less thirsty. This allowed her to hang the paper without the plaster sucking all the paste off the back of the wallpaper.

But even if Grandma’s house was built after 1960, it is almost a sure bet that there isn’t a square inch of plaster in the whole place. Almost everything built in the USA after that time has a paper-faced gypsum board called drywall or sheetrock. That soft, absorbent paper facing needs more than just a coat of flour paste to protect it from the extended soak time resulting from the application of wet wallpaper. Drywall needs a barrier coating to shield it from the wallpaper paste when the new paper is hung and that barrier is only achieved by priming or sealing the surface with a suitable wallcovering primer.

I’ve seen instructions that say to use a ‘prep-coat.’ Isn’t that a primer? Prep coats are clear, light-duty acrylics. They are best used for installations where you want to be sure the new wallpaper gets a good grip on surfaces that might ordinarily be too glossy or non-porous for the paper to adhere to. Let’s say you move into an older home and the bathroom or kitchen walls have a few coats of high gloss oil paint. A prep coat would stick well to a surface like that and then the wallpaper paste would piggyback on top of the prep coat film for adhesion. It is important to remember that prep-coats adhere well to things like glass, Formica, plastic paneling, and glossy non-porous paints but don’t guarantee wall protection when used on a regular latex painted wall. Prep coats are slightly better than sizing ...paste sizing offers almost no wall protection.

THE WALL PROTECTING PRIMERS:

1. Universal Pigmented Acrylics
2. Alkyd Primers-(Alkyd primers must be top coated with an acrylic prep-coat before hanging material on them.)
3. Drywall Repair Clears.

These three types of primers are what the wallpaper manufacturers are talking about when they recommend a “good quality primer” for wallpaper on the instruction sheet. Not only do these types form a hard crust on the soft drywall paper, but they also can block out and seal contaminants that may come through the existing paint to damage your new paper—for example, old brown paste hiding in pores from earlier wallpaper installations can leach into delicate wallpapers and stain them. (Note--For aggressive stains like magic marker, ballpoint pen, or old inks, a primer specifically designed to kill stains must be used. ) Wall protecting primers can make the difference between an excellent installation and a seam-popping mess or a drywall ripping removal fiasco. They insure an excellent installation and that means the wallpaper is:

• Well adhered
• All seams stay tight for the duration of the job
• Removal down the road is achieved with zero sheetrock damage
  

That last part—the part about removing the paper – is of major concern to many people. Surveys show that the buying public is convinced that wallpaper removal has to result in damaged walls…. and that just isn’t so. This false impression the public has gotten stems from decades of non-professional or amateur installations where the vital step of priming was either omitted completely or a light duty, insufficient “primer” was used by a do-it-yourselfer who really didn’t understand what the wall surface required. When your installer uses one of the wall protecting type primers listed above you can rest assured that your installation is up to current standards for sheetrock protection at the time of removal.

When a Pro Primes for a Pro Installation:

Professional paperhangers should wear T-shirts that say, “Please Don’t Try This Yourself at Home.” In order to hang wallpapers in rooms that are imperfect, or hang papers that are themselves imperfect, it frequently becomes necessary to use professional hanging techniques where good wall protection is essential. Repositioning several sheets at a time may be necessary to adjust patterns for optimal “straightness” in rooms that aren’t really straight. Specialized double-cutting techniques allow the pro to inlay borders at the ceiling or chair-rail and achieve complicated joinery in archways—all of which would be impossible without a professional-grade wall protecting primer on the wall surface.

Blankstock and Lining Papers

Sometimes it is necessary to use a special underlayment wallcovering known as a lining paper. If walls are rough and the new wallpaper is very thin, a lining paper serves to cushion and smooth out the roughness of bad walls. This type of lining paper is generally referred to as a “bridging liner” and it can be used, within reason, to smooth out a rough surface. Bridging liners usually consist of non absorbent synthetic fibers and are the type of lining paper most effective on poor surfaces.

Sometimes the customer will ask if they can use bridging liner to go over grooved wood paneling. Bridging liners have been advertised for this purpose for years now, but there can be severe problems associated with this practice. Plaster or drywall are stable surfaces which do not expand or shrink when humidity levels rise and fall through the seasons—not so with wood paneling. Despite efforts to nail down, screw down, or glue down wood paneling there can still be problems for a wallpaper installation if humidity levels affect the wood fibers. Generally speaking, bridging liner over wood is bad medicine and few installers will guarantee this installation. The best practice is to remove the wood paneling before wallpapering.

It has been noted that different types of pattern papers can exert a shrinkage tension on a painted wall and if that paint is not well adhered, there can be problems later on when the pattern paper has actually pulled off sections of paint--- usually in the seam areas. Using a lining paper is usually the best bet to avoid situations like this since it can withstand a much greater degree of “shrinkage tension” from the pattern paper than paint can. If you are in doubt about the integrity of a painted surface and want to provide extra insurance that seams will not open over the years, a bridging liner can do a good job of reconditioning that type of surface. Using a liner paper for this purpose, however, is a judgment call that can only be determined by an experienced professional.

Some higher end papers call for blankstock lining or what they refer to in their instructions as “cross lining.” Blankstock is simply a plain, absorbent lining paper without any synthetic fibers. Absorbency is the key word here, so when a material calls for “cross lining” you must use a non synthetic plain paper and never a synthetic. In addition to providing seam strength and a smoother overall look, blankstock also has the important purpose of absorbing the paste from the back of the pattern paper. This speeds up dry time and avoids the possibility of “water marking” or “water staining” which can ruin a very expensive high end paper. Whenever you see the word “cross lining” in the instructions for English pulp papers it always means blankstock lining not synthetic bridging liner.

Pre Pasted Wallcoverings

Don’t be concerned about whether you have chosen a prepasted or unpasted wallcovering. Any good installer will know what to do with either type of material. Many installers add adhesive to prepasted papers simply so they can better manipulate the material as they are hanging it. As a general rule, all the pastes that a paperhanger is likely to add to the prepasted materials are superior to the “one-size-fits-all” pasting the manufacturer added to call their material “prepasted.”

An added paste can ensure that seams adhere better in difficult areas like shower baths or above baseboard heaters. An upgrade in paste can make the material seam better, cut better, and even help the match stay true on longer pieces. As long as the installer observes the guidelines that added pastes should be non-synthetic and easily water soluble as most pastes are and that drywall is well primed in the manner described above, the customer should expect no wall damage during paper removal in the future.

Specialty and Designer Papers:

Loosely defined, these are wallpapers that don’t fit into the main categories of mass market paper outlined in the very first paragraph of this booklet. They usually involve some sort of special hanging technique, special paste or special wall preparation.

Sometimes what can make papers “special” is that they are very shiny metallics or very dark matte colors which require extra time and advanced installation experience. Be advised that a super shiny material is going to bring out wall imperfections that weren’t apparent to the eye when the wall was painted flat. Sometimes these wall imperfections are too serious for the installer to overcome with spackle and liner paper— like bowed walls in two story hallways or originally substandard sheetrock work when the house was built.

Shiny metallics are also prone to reflect light at the seam which points out where every seam is. (Imagine two wall length mirror sections joined together at a seam—no matter how close the seam, you will still see where they join.) Very dark materials can have seam problems too, because the paper comes pre-trimmed from the factory with white edges. It is oftentimes not possible for your installer to re-trim the seams since pattern will be lost. If the installer must touch up the seams of these dark pattern papers with artist’s paint remember…. they are trying to help the customer’s installation look better by covering up manufacturer’s mistakes, not cover up installer mistakes.

The following are some common designer or specialty materials:

Grasscloth

Grasscloth comes in two varieties: dyed and natural. The natural grass does not match at the seam…period. If the customer wants the look of individual panels that do not blend together then, by all means, go for it. Dyed grass has a more uniform look and does not have the “panel effect” of the natural stuff. Bear in mind that all grasscloth comes in an odd width and a very short double roll. Have a pro measure before any ordering is done.

Hand Made Prints That Must Be Trimmed By The Installer

These types are very expensive to buy and they are also more expensive to have installed. They take much more time to install and require specialized hanging techniques. They are also much more prone to print defects than mass-market printed materials. The manufacturers of hand prints also don’t call their defects “defects” anyway—they call them “beautiful hand made variations in color or pattern.” If your customer decides on a hand print, make sure that they are prepared to accept less-than-perfect matching of pattern at the seam and possibly other quirky characteristics you have to “learn to love.”

British Pulps

British Pulps are unsealed, pure paper without any coating and, as such, have no protection against dirt or staining. These papers often require that the walls be crosslined (see Lining Paper above). Since they have no vinyl coating, they can achieve a very appealing matte finish virtually unattainable with vinyls and vinyl coateds. Beware the British Pulps when ordering though. They frequently call a double roll a single roll or “bolt.” People often receive exactly twice as much paper as they need when not paying attention to this foreign system and many of these companies do not accept returns


This page was written by Jim Parodi. When not offering penetrating commentary on all aspects of the wall-covering industry, Jim is a second-generation paperhanger based in Cornwall-on-Hudson, NY. An NGPP member since 1987, Parodi is a member of The Bergen County Master-craftsman Paint and Paper Association in the suburbs of New York City.