Wonders of Wallpaper!

Let's talk about important things: wallpaper.  Loooove me some wallpaper.  We're not talking about your grandma's wallpaper, featuring the primitive lady washing her clothes on the washboard down by the stream (just me?).  Wallpaper today is colorful and vibrant and F-U-N, fun!  

One awesome thing about wallpaper is that it's a great statement maker.  It can really make a room by stealing the spotlight in a good way.  As in a, "Oh, hello, don't mind me.  Just sitting here on your walls being fabulous." kind of way.  Wallpaper is a commitment, but if you find the right one, I think you'll find that the two of you are very happy together.  There is even some less permanent peel and stick wallpaper now, that might help if you have commitment issues hesitations.

I especially love wallpaper in a small space.  It makes the room feel so special.  Like a little jewel box.  We put wallpaper in our powder room downstairs a few years ago and I still love the way this peeks out of the room into the family room.  It turns an ordinary, purely functional room into a design showstopper.

I also love wallpaper on a large scale as a feature wall.   Our mudroom addition off the back features a 20 foot wall two stories high, which lets in awesome light.  However, it was a lot of white wall.  So I knew that if I wallpapered this wall in a fun wallpaper it would bring warmth and an unexpected surprise to the room.  Since the room is in the back of the house, and not easily viewable from everywhere, I knew I could be a little more bold in here.  But when I calculated the cost of wallpaper to cover a 20 foot wall, I had a hard time biting the bullet for a rarely seen mudroom in the back of the house. Buzz kill.

I started looking into other options and a friend of mine told me about a stencil.  Now, when I was a kid growing up, I had a stencil border of hearts and flowers in my room (it was AWESOME, by the way) but just as wallpaper has evolved, (thank you wallpaper Jesus),  so have stencils.   And low and behold we found a stencil in almost the exact same pattern as the wallpaper I was debating not sending my kids to college to afford!

Now, since the walls were in fact so tall,  we did have to hire someone to come in with scaffolding and paint the stencil for us.  It looked to be a tedious job, but she did a great job and when people see it they always compliment our "wallpaper".  In fact, you have to get really close and run your hand along the wall to tell that it is actually a stencil.  The best part? We spent about a third of what we would have spent on the wallpaper.

So, the lesson here today is: yay wallpaper!  Go for it!  But if your piggy bank won't allow for the wallpaper that you want, try for the stencil!

And speaking of stencils, here's an example of a custom stencil we did in my daughter's room.  It might be an upgrade from the hearts and flowers of my youth.

Where have you wallpapered?  Anyone have an awesome stencil story?  I can't wait to hear!  Thanks for reading, friends!

Some favorite wallpaper brands:
Thibaut
Abnormals Anonymous
Schumacher

A great stencil sight:
Cutting Edge Stencils

And if you're local, I have the name of a good stencil applicator.  Let me know!