How Much Wallpaper Do I Need?

If you are thinking of having wallpaper installed at your house, you are asking “How much wallpaper do I need?”

Before I can give you that answer, I have to ask you some questions!

• Do you have a wallpaper selected?
• Yes? Then we can proceed- If you do not, I cannot tell you (you will see why)
• How wide is the wallpaper?
• How long is the roll of wallpaper? (yards or meters)
• Does the wallpaper have a pattern?
• Is it a repeat pattern – what is it? (usually in inches)

How to Measure Wallpaper

Wallpaper is sold in rolls, bolts, double rolls, or by the yard. There are also metric rolls- be aware of that!

To find how much wallpaper you need we need to come to the house and “engineer’ or layout the room.  We will measure each will for height and width.

As we measure the room we will convert the width into inches. Next, total up inches of the whole room and divide by the width of the wallpaper selected.  This number tells us how many drops or strips of wallpaper we need for your project. The height of the walls tells us how long each strip will need to be.  Now we know how many strips we can get from each roll.

Do not subtract any doors or windows- patterns and layout of the room usually do not allow to remove these spaces- they have to be wallpaper around and we have to make sure the wallpaper will match.

Other things to keep in mind:

• Are you wallpapering the outlet covers?
• Are you wallpapering the HVAC vents?

If you pick a wallpaper with a large pattern repeat- 15 to 48 inches, you will have a lot of wasted paper that will get trashed. Keep that in mind as you select and buy (how much do you want to throw away).

Here is quick video, for one wall so you kind of hear and see what I mean:

We will work on a better how-to on this… but it gives you some idea as we ask questions and measure what to look for. We hope that this helps answer your question of, “How much wallpaper do I need?”

Let us know if you have any questions or how we can help you love the house you live in!