How to Buy Wallpaper

1. Before you go shopping, decide exactly where you want to install the paper. (This may sound obvious, but lots of people don’t have a specific room in mind when they go shopping.) For example, ask yourself: Is the moisture level high or low in the room? Is it dark, or is there plenty of sunlight? Is there heavy traffic or only light traffic?
2. Bring samples of the paint color, the rug, carpet or flooring colors, and any upholstery fabrics in the room. If you have a digital camera, take a few shots of the room and bring them along.
3. Make a small floorplan drawing to show the overall room size and the locations of any windows and doors.
4. Try to narrow down your choices to a few preferences. Do you like dark colors or light ones? Do you prefer involved floral patterns or simple vertical stripes?
5. Once you’re in the store, take a few minutes to understand the lay of the land. Stores organize their books differently, so check with the salesperson to make sure you use the most efficient approach.
6. When you start looking, move quickly from book to book until you see a general palette that you like. Then slow down, note the number of the book, and plan to spend some time with it.
7. Determine the number of rolls you’ll need. To do this, refer to the chart in How to Estimate Wallpaper Needs.
8. Wallpaper pricing is more complicated than it needs to be. These products are usually priced by the single roll but sold by the double roll. This means that if you find a sample you like, and it’s priced at $15, you’ll pay $30 for each double roll.
9. Papers are manufactured so that adjacent pieces line up with a drop match or a straight match. Drop match papers have patterns that repeat at certain intervals—sometimes every few inches, sometimes every few feet. Aligning such pieces can generate quite a bit of waste. Straight match papers have plain vertical patterns (such as stripes) that don’t match at the seams, so there is very little waste.
10. Before you make your final decision, get some samples to take home and look at them under different lighting conditions. Make sure they look as good in the actual room as they did in the store.
11. Once you order the paper and go to pick it up, check the lot numbers or run numbers on each roll to make sure they are the same. If they aren’t, matching problems are a real possibility, so don’t buy the paper.