A Bedroom Transformation with Peel & Stick Wallpaper from Fancy Walls
Read below for my tips & tricks on installing peel & stick wallpaper!
This blog post is part of a paid promotion with Fancy Walls. Regardless, all of my thoughts are my own and my opinion of the product is genuine.
Over the last few months, I decided to tackle the two “unfinished” spaces in my home - the guest rooms. We don’t have any kids yet, so our two spare bedrooms upstairs have largely sat empty or packed with all of our extra junk.
We finally made it our mission to get RID of the extra junk and just have two functional, beautiful rooms. I tried to make both of them unique and gender-neutral so we could potentially use them as kids’ rooms in the future without too many changes.
This second room was all centred around the design of the wallpaper I chose from Fancy Walls. They have hundreds of designs on their site, and all of them are completely customizable by colour. I picked out the Minimalist Plaid and decided to make it my own by changing up the colour scheme - they graciously made a new listing with my choices called Neutral Plaid.
They sent me a sample and helped me toy with the colours a bit before I finalised the design and placed my order for peel-and-stick wallpaper. Once that was set, I visualised the rest of the room with a mood board. The wallpaper is obviously quite neutral, so I was looking to bring in some pops of colour with a green paint choice and some blue accents (rug, throw pillows).
Why peel & stick?
Peel and stick wallpaper is more familiar to me as I’ve installed it before, so it felt like the safer choice. Now that the room is done, I have no plans to change it, but it is nice to know with peel & stick that it can be removed with relatively little wall damage. I have yet to try traditional wallpaper that needs to be pasted to the wall, but Fancy Walls does offer all their designs in this option as well if that’s the way you want to go.
How to install
Fancy Walls has a great calculator on their website that will help you figure out how many panels you need to order to complete your project. They always add a little bit extra in case a panel gets messed up. The wallpaper comes in manageable panels that allow you to hang a little bit at a time. They come delivered in a big roll and I like to just lay them all out first to make sure I have enough. Basically, each panel is a repeat of the panel before, so it’s all about lining up the design and tackling your project piece by piece!
Tools you’ll need
Peel & stick wallpaper is pretty easy-going. All you really need is a nice firm plastic scraper or squeegee, some scissors, and an X-Acto knife. It helps to have a friend assisting you in the install as it’s sometimes tough to line up the design by yourself.
My tips for application
1. If you need to paint the wall below before applying your wallpaper, use a PRIMER, not a latex paint. Latex paint needs to cure for 30 days before wallpaper can be applied, while primer needs only 24-48 hours.
2. Rather than starting in a corner, use your level to draw a straight line down a mid-point in your wall. You can lay out your pieces on the floor to determine where is the best place to get started. Drawing a line rather than starting in a corner ensures that your first piece is super super straight - which is very important because that first piece determines the consistency of your entire install. A corner - especially in an older home - can be less than perfectly straight, so not the best place to start.
3. Very slightly overlap your pieces when installing - just a few mm. This prevents you from having any gap as you make your way down the wall. If you try to place the pieces side-by-side, you may see some wall peeking through which you want to avoid.
4. Only roll back a couple feet of the backing at a time. This allows you to work in small sections down the wall, giving you time to line up all the way down the wall. To start, unroll about a foot of the material and stick to the wall. Once it’s smooth, continue unrolling from the back and repeating all the way down the wall.
5. To smooth out any potential bubbles, use your plastic scraper to run down the middle of the paper, then out to the each side. This was a fail-proof method for me - I have literally ZERO bubbles!!
6. When you get to the base of your wall, use your plastic scraper to push your paper tight against the trim. Then, place your X-Acto knife behind the blade of the scraper and follow it across the length of the trim to get that perfect straight line.
7. When working around a window, I actually prefer to start BELOW the window and get that section all done before coming up to do the difficult trimming around the window. The great thing about peel & stick is that you can peel off the backing on just one SECTION at a time, so I only peel off the parts that are going to stick to the wall, and trim off everything else.
8. When working into a corner, if your paper is only going to wrap around the corner a tiny bit (ie. a few inches), you’ll probably have success just pushing it into and around the corner without any cutting. If you have more of a half/half situation, you’re going to want to cut your paper all the way down the corner, and install it as two separate pieces with a tiny bit of overlap.
You’ll notice that we installed this wallpaper around the ENTIRE room, so we met nearly every obstacle - windows, doors, corners, outlets, you name it! But I found this Fancy Walls wallpaper to be SO easy to work with. All said and done, I did this over three evenings, spending a couple hours each time, so it probably took me around 5 hours to do the entire room.
This is the second time I’ve installed whole panels of peel & stick and this wallpaper was far superior to the previous one I installed. On my previous installation, I ended up with tons of bubbles and spent hours pricking them all with a safety pin and smoothing them out. I literally didn’t have to do that a single time with this wallpaper. It is bubble free!
With that said, I wholeheartedly recommend Fancy Walls - both for their customer serrvice & customization options AND the quality of the wallpaper compared to other brands.
Now - here we go with some shots of the completed space. I am anxiously awaiting the blue rug that will bring some more colour to the space and just be a perfect fit.
Here are some other details for the space:
I created the “picture rail” with some cheap MDF trim pieces I found at Lowe’s. It was less than $1 per foot.
I painted the top section of the room in “Gloucester Sage” by Benjamin Moore.
Most of the bedding is from Target and the curtains are from Amazon. I’ve linked everything I can here.
That rocking chair was built by my great great uncle and has been in my family for generations! I hope to sand it down to the original wood sometime soon.
The light fixture is probably my favourite part besides the wallpaper and it is from Kichler. It’s called the Edmar pendant and you can purchase it here.
The gold wreath over the bed is from one of my fave local (and online) shops, Cinder & Sage. The wreath is out of stock but check out her shop for other super cute items!
Any other questions? Drop them in the comments!
And make sure you are following me on Instagram to keep up with the latest projects as they happen!
xoxo Bailey
