Hiring a wallpaperer: prep, patterns and price

What a wallpapering job involves

Hanging wallpaper looks simple and isn't. The visible work — pasting and smoothing drops onto the wall, matching the pattern and trimming neatly around edges — sits on top of preparation that decides how the result holds up. Old wallpaper has to come off, the walls are patched and sanded smooth, and a size or primer is applied so the paper adheres and can be removed cleanly later. Skipping that prep is where seams lift and bubbles appear.

Papers themselves vary widely: paste-the-wall and non-woven papers are faster to hang than traditional paste-the-paper types, and patterned papers with a large repeat need extra material to match the pattern across drops. Wallpapering is a specialist finishing trade — some painters do it, but a dedicated wallpaperer's seam and pattern work shows, especially on stairwells and around windows.

How the cost works

Wallpapering is priced per square metre or per drop, and on mid-range jobs the paper and the hanging labour roughly split the cost. A feature wall sits at the low end, a full room in the middle, and multiple rooms, a stairwell or a wide-format mural higher again. The calculator on this page shows indicative bands. The paper itself is the biggest single variable — rolls range from budget vinyl to designer prints many times the price.

Two things quietly push the cost up. Pattern repeat: large repeats waste more paper and take longer to hang than plain or textured papers. And wall preparation: removing old paper, patching and sizing adds hours before the first drop goes up. High walls, stairwells and rooms full of windows, doors and power points all slow the hang. Ask whether removal and sizing are in the quote — that's where quotes differ.

Choosing a wallpaperer

Wallpapering is an unlicensed finishing trade, so you're comparing on craft and preparation rather than a licence number. The signals of a good one are that they talk about wall prep and pattern matching unprompted, they measure properly rather than guessing roll counts, and they ask about the paper you've chosen because paste-the-wall and paste-the-paper types hang differently.

Get the inclusions in writing: old paper removal, patching and sizing, and how many rolls they're allowing including waste for the pattern repeat. Order 10 to 15 percent extra paper from the same batch number — dye lots vary and reordering later rarely matches. Photos of previous work, especially tricky areas like stairwells and corners, tell you more than a showroom sample ever will.

Mistakes to avoid

Wallpapering regrets are mostly about skipped preparation and paper ordered short. A beautiful paper hung over unprepared walls, or a pattern that runs out mid-room from a different dye lot, both undo the whole point of choosing wallpaper.

• Comparing quotes without checking whether old paper removal and sizing are included
• Under-ordering paper — allow 10 to 15 percent extra for the pattern repeat and waste
• Reordering later from a different batch number and getting a visible dye-lot mismatch
• Hanging over unprepared walls, then watching the seams lift and bubble
• Ignoring how a large pattern repeat adds both material and hanging time
• Choosing on price alone when seam and pattern work is exactly what you're paying for