The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California

Interior Decorating

Wallpaper. Such is the modern interest in home decorating that wallpaper is now obtainable in a very great variety of colours and patterns and in varying qualities to suit anyone's pocket Usually it will be found best to avoid the use of the very cheap kinds of paper which may be found difficult to hang by the home decorator because of the tendency to tear when dampened by paste and because of the possibility of the surface preparing colours not being entirely fast. Sample books of specimens of wallpaper may be inspected at local suppliers. Wallpaper is purchased in rolls. The width of English wallpaper is 21 ins , and each roll is between 11 and 12 yds in length These dimensions are standard throughout the trade. Therefore it is a simple matter to estimate the exact amount of paper required for a particular job. To estimate a quantity of paper required the decorator should first arrive at the number or strips necessary to cover all the walls of the room and this can easily be determined by roughly marking off the walls in 21 ins. widths. The number of strips should be multiplied by the height of the walls and an extra 6 ins. for trimming should be allowed for each strip. It the total in yards is divided by 11 ins. the resulting figure will be the number of rolls required. In most cases an odd number consisting of so many rolls and a fraction of a roll is arrived at, and if this is so, the part roll should be counted as a full roll. This simple basis of estimating requirements may be confidently applied to plain papers and those that have small irregular surface patterns which do not require matching up but for a paper selected that has a large pattern motif which requires matching at the seams, due allowance will have to be made by adding to the length of each strip. In most cases it will be found that much of the wastage when matching adjoining strips of wallpaper can be overcome by using alternate strips as they are cut from the roll.

There are two ways in which to finish the seams of adjoining strips of wallpaper. When papering one strip may overlap the border of the other strip but the professional decorator always joins the edges of the paper exactly so that they butt to each other. For the cost ot a few pence per roll the amateur decorator can have the rolls trimmed by machine at the shop where the paper is purchased. Paper can of course be trimmed by hand at home but this is a laborious job and unless it is done very carefully in many cases the edges of the paper will not be accurately cut.