One of the most intimidating things about moving into a new home are all the blank walls that are staring back at you, begging for decoration. And wall art is not cheap! Especially when you have larger wall expanses to cover. That’s exactly the situation we found ourselves in. When we moved into our home, our living-dining room had a huge wall expanse that stretched over 4 meters long. We had put in some lovely mouldings, but by creating those squares, it almost made the lack of art within the square more obvious.
So we set out to look for some long pieces of art that would seem proportionate to the long wall. It didn’t take long for us to realize that it was extremely hard to find the right size pieces for an affordable amount. Most of the pieces were priced around 700€! So we put the search to the side and focused on other tasks. But the huge blank wall was screaming at us, it sorely needed a focal point. One afternoon, perusing on Pinterest, I came across the idea of a wallpaper mural installed in a scaled dimension / height that gave the impression of a huge pice of artwork. This was the perfect solution for our conundrum, as we already had the “frame” built out (the wall moulding).
After sending out for dozens (I really mean dozens) of wallpaper samples, I finally fell in love with this one from Tapet Show on Etsy. I wanted to have a soft, watercolor type piece that mimicked a painting, and this one reminded me of a painting at Pemberley, very 18th century British countryside. The amazing thing is that this seller, along with many other wallpaper sellers, was able to scale the image to the dimensions of the wall you want to install it on. So we gave her our measurements (in our case it was 324 cm wide by 124 cm high), and the image was scaled perfectly to our space. We chose to get the self-adhesive wallpaper instead of the traditional with paste, because our idea was that this would be like a piece of art. And maybe one day, we get tired of this piece and want to change to another picture. Choosing the self-adhesive option gave us that flexibility.
The installation was straight-forward enough, but you really need two people. One to ensure the wallpaper is level, and the other to pull the adhesive backing off slowly. Then the first individual works their way down with a smoothing tool to ensure there are no wrinkles or air bubbles. Once you get to the edges of the frame, slight touch-ups can be done with a boxcutter to ensure the paper fits perfectly within its frame. And while I won’t lie, some curse words were exchanged, installation took us one hour in total. More than anything the key is to have a steady, level hand and smooth communication between the two. And the price? Our wallpaper piece cost less than 250€ – a steal when you compare to the price of an art piece that size.
Can you think of another home project that takes one hour and adds so much impact? I have now been living with the mural for the past year in my home, and have yet to get tired of it. It adds so much character and warmth to the space, and is by far what I get most comments from guests on. I cannot recommend this project enough, imagine the endless amount of options available to you if you start considering wallpaper as art. Even if you don’t have as large of a wall expanse as we did, is there a certain part of a wallpaper pattern that you love? Buy the smallest roll you can, and frame out a square area that you like, and voila! Please feel free to share with me if you’ve done a similar project in your home!
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