Covent Garden Painters & Decorators
Wallpaper & wallcoverings
A wallcovering can give a compact Covent Garden dining room depth or make a small apartment entrance feel deliberate. Its success depends on the wall beneath it and on where the pattern starts and finishes.
Discuss your project
Compose the wall before ordering
Show the full elevation, including doors, radiators, sockets and fitted seating. Identify the view that matters most: from the entrance, behind a desk or across a restaurant table. Discuss pattern position and the treatment of recesses before calculating material quantities. A large repeat, a short return and an off-centre opening should be considered together rather than discovered at the first drop.
Establish what is already on the wall
Provide the wallcovering’s product information alongside photographs of the existing finish. Ask for the preparation scope to distinguish removal, repairs, lining and hanging, including any assessment needed after the old covering comes away. Record unresolved damp or unstable plaster as separate matters. For older decorative finishes, establish whether specialist investigation is needed before stripping begins.
Choose for the room’s use
A bedroom wall and a restaurant circulation route have different demands. Check the manufacturer’s cleaning, installation and suitability information for the proposed location. In commercial premises, obtain the required performance specification from the responsible designer or building contact before making a decorative selection. Appearance, product approval and maintenance instructions should remain together in the material record.
Finish the perimeter carefully
Agree how the covering meets skirtings, cornices, cabinetry and painted door frames. Confirm which fittings will be temporarily removed and who is responsible for that work. Where a paper continues around a corner or into an alcove, make the intended extent explicit. Retain the product and batch details, and discuss whether spare material should be kept for a later local repair.
Lining paper, porosity and what the wall must do first
A wallcovering will telegraph whatever the wall is doing underneath it, so the preparation is part of the hanging brief rather than a preliminary to be assumed. Sound, previously painted plaster may need a wash and a light rub. A porous or patchy surface may need a sealer or a lining so that moisture from the adhesive does not strike unevenly and leave a blister or a shiny seam. New plaster is left to dry and then primed as the adhesive and the covering require. Paper already on the wall is identified, because a vinyl, a painted lining and a fibre that has been overcoated each come away differently, and the plaster beneath may need repair once they have gone. Where the existing finish might be historic decoration, stripping waits until someone competent to judge that risk has advised. Lining paper is hung to cross the joints of the finishing covering, and its own seams are rubbed down flush. The brief states whether the decorator supplies the lining and adhesive or hangs materials the client has already bought, including the batch, because a later roll from another batch can shift in tone.
Setting out pattern, seams and the edges of the room
Set the pattern out on a drawing of the wall before any roll is cut. Mark the door, the window, the radiator, the sockets and the fitted seating, then choose the drop that the eye meets first, whether that is the view from the entrance or the wall behind a restaurant table. The repeat, a short return beside a chimney breast and any opening off the centre line are set out as one problem. Starting in a corner that nobody sees can push a mismatch into the middle of the main wall. Seams on an outside corner are wrapped or cut according to the covering, and an inside corner is checked for plumb before the next length is booked. The meeting with skirtings, cornices, architraves and cabinetry is agreed in advance: scribed, cut tight, or stopped on a timber bead. Fittings that must come off the wall are named, with the person responsible for removing and reinstating them. Adhesive open time and the room’s heat decide how many lengths can be pasted at once. Spare material, kept dry and labelled with the batch, is the practical reserve for a later repair above a socket or behind a chair rail.
Questions about Wallpaper & wallcoverings
What does wallpaper hanging include in a Covent Garden room?
Wallpaper hanging in a Covent Garden room covers the covering itself: setting out the pattern and the seams, and preparing the wall that has to carry them, including a lining where that wall needs one. It includes where the paper stops at skirtings, cornices, cabinets and door frames. It does not paint those frames unless you add them, and it does not include the shopfront or the external windows.
What preparation should I expect before a covering is hung?
The wall is part of a Covent Garden hanging brief. Sound painted plaster, a patchy porous surface and a wall that still carries an old covering do not start from the same place. Lining paper is used when the surface needs it, not as an automatic extra. Ask for removal, repairs, lining and hanging to be listed apart, because the old covering can reveal something the photographs did not. Sockets, radiators and fitted seating belong on a sketch so seams and quantities can be planned.
What should I send for a wallcovering quotation?
Send the full Covent Garden address and photographs of each wall, from the doorway as well as close to any damage. If a product is chosen, send its name and width so the setting-out can be discussed. Mark the view that matters most, such as a small flat’s entrance or the wall behind a dining table. Note recesses and alcoves you want included. Say whether the rooms are a home or a business, and attach any landlord rule about what may be applied.
How do pattern, seams and drying affect when a room can be used?
The first drop is chosen against the view you care about, and the repeat is followed so the pattern meets across the Covent Garden wall. Seams are placed with the light and the traffic of the room in mind, and the turn into a corner is agreed rather than left to chance. Adhesives need the time the manufacturer describes before the wall is wiped or furniture is pushed hard against it. That interval is a product fact for the Covent Garden room in front of you.
Related services
Covent Garden streets for this service
Start with the space
What needs
a new finish?
Tell us whether the work is for a home, a business or a shared building. Include the Covent Garden address, the surfaces involved and the times when access could be available.
Your decorating enquiry
Describe the existing finish, the change you want and any restrictions on working in the space.