DIY Wallpaper | A Simple Way to Upgrade Your Space

We’ve been hard at work on the girls’ room. I am so excited about the progress I can hardly contain it! So let’s get to it! We have wallpaper up in the girls room and we all love it!

We started planning the girls’ room makeover a couple of months ago. During our planning, we talked about how fun it would be to add some DIY wallpaper to the girls’ room.

I didn’t know exactly what kind of wallpaper we would use, but the girls and I were all over Pinterest looking for inspiration.

So when Photowall reached out to me (a couple of weeks later!!!) and asked if I’d collaborate with them I almost fell over! It couldn’t have been better timing or a more perfect collaboration!

The way the Lord works is amazing!

I love everything about this wallpaper and everyone else in the house loves the wallpaper too!

Disclosure: Photowall sponsored this post, but the content and the opinions expressed here are my own. Thank you for supporting the brands I love that make Open Doors Open Hearts possible.

Why DIY Wallpaper?

I knew I wanted to add some color to the girls’ room, but I also knew painting beautiful flowers on the wall was not in my wheelhouse.

But the biggie was the girls asked for color in their room.

The options were either to paint some color on the walls, which we just discussed, my skillset there isn’t great, or wallpaper.

I’ve been scared of DIY wallpaper for a couple reasons.

1. People who remember wallpaper when it was in its heyday have told me horror stories of wallpaper removal.
2. The obvious. I’ve never done it!

That being said, I’ve learned a couple things about fear.

1. Letting fear dictate my life has no rewards and in many ways, it has prevented me from living the life that I dream of.
2. Living for tomorrow means that we never get to live for today and enjoy the moment we are currently in.

So DIY wallpaper it is!

We will deal with wallpaper removal if/when that day comes, and YouTube and Pinterest are great for learning new skills!

Fear conquered with logic!

Supplies To Hang Wallpaper

Bucket
Paint roller
Pasting brush
Utility knife
Level
Plastic roller
Trim Guide Scrape
Plastic Putty Knife
Glue + water + stir stick
Wallpaper + scissors

Steps to Hang DIY Wallpaper

Prepare the Walls

1. Before you begin hanging the wallpaper you need to clean & prepare the walls. We had holes to patch and dirt to clean off the walls.

Prepare for Hanging DIY Wallpaper

2. When the paper arrived it was in one big roll. They place cut lines on it so I knew where to cut the paper.

3. For this step, we kinda cheated. We had access to a laser level. This is ABSOLUTELY not needed. But since we had it we used it. If you don’t have access to this you would just use a regular level, tape measure, and pencil to mark a perfectly level and straight line down the wall. (Hint: Don’t be fooled. The wall isn’t straight in any way. This is why the level is necessary.) Our straight & level line was actually closer to the adjoining wall the closer we got to the floor.

4. After your line is ready you can mix the glue. I used a bucket that was wide enough for the paint roller. We used a disposable roller liner to roll off the excess glue from dipping the roller into the bucket.

Begin Hanging DIY Wallpaper

5. Next, we rolled and brushed glue onto the wall. Make sure you go just past the width of the wallpaper strip. Otherwise, you’ll be like us and be peeling back the paper to reapply some glue haha!

6. It’s finally time to hang the wallpaper. We started at the top and worked our way down, making sure the wallpaper lined up with our level line the entire way down.

7. Now that the wallpaper was on the wall and lined up properly we used the plastic putty knife to get the bubbles out. We found the best process for this was to work from the middle of the paper out to the left and then again from the middle out to the right. (Photowall has a great tutorial video to show you this HERE.)

8. To create a tighter seal and ensure all bubbles were out we repeated step 7 with the trim guide scrape. We also used both of these tools to make sure we got the wallpaper adhered in the corner of the wall and the corner where the wall meets the ceiling by pushing the wallpaper into these corners with these tools.

9. Then we repeated steps 5-8 to hang the second strip of wallpaper.

10. Once we had 2 pieces of wallpaper lined up properly side by side on the wall we used the plastic roller along the seam. This sealed the seam and made it nearly invisible. This was my favorite part! It seriously was like a magic wand for wallpaper seams!

11. Next we repeated this process until the wall was completely covered with wallpaper.

Helpful Hints

Cutting Around Outlets and Light Switches

When cutting around a light switch or an outlet get the paper lined up properly on the wall and then cut out that section of the wallpaper. If you start working out the bubbles before you cut this section out you will double your work. After cutting it out we always had to rework the bubbles.

Cutting Around a Window

If you are going to be working around a window cut as much as you can out of the wallpaper strip before you try to hang it to the wall. The first time we left the entire strip up and it was very cumbersome to work with. The next strip we hung we made measurements on the wallpaper and cut out a small chunk of the paper we knew we would but cutting away anyway. This made it much easier to work with. It wasn’t perfect, we still had excess to trim off, but it was much more manageable.

That’s it!! Again, we did something that we’ve never done before and we love it! Is it perfect? No. No, it’s not. Did we learn lessons doing it? Yes, yes we did. Which is why I’ve written this for you. Learn from our mistakes and go hang your DIY wallpaper BETTER than we did!!

Pin for Later!

Thanks so much for stopping by! I hope that you were encouraged to try something new. Whether it’s hanging DIY wallpaper or something completely different!! Tell me all about it! I can’t wait to hear what you’re doing!

Make sure you follow along on Pinterest, Facebook, and Instagram so we can stay connected in between posts! Also, join the mailing list and never miss a thing!

Have a great week! XoXo

Open Your Doors,
Aliya