Painted versus papered walls?

[ThornhillMike]

Depends on the house.
In our C17 cottage with its wonky unflat walls we have little scope for paper. I have been able to paper one room, or rather two walls in one room, two rolls each costing >£100.... arrgh

In our 1920 house, I papered every room other than the kitchen.
Paper below the picture rail, embossed paper on the ceiling and freize.

I'm afraid that in any house from mid C19 onwards, I tend to regard painted walls as a copout, and certainly in any house with formal architecture.

Your falling off paper could be because the lining paper was not sized. The walls should be sized, then the lining paper when dry, should be sized. I am especial lary of pre-pasted papers.

Our 1920 house.... destroyed by the ... people... to whom we sold it... dining room, sitting room, hall.

Love the middle paper; that's what we're tending towards, although a three storey stairwell has me slightly dizzy at the cost of decent paper for the wall area involved!

 

[mattyb]

No decorative wallpapers here, just very subtle colours. I flirted briefly with the idea of some chinoiserie paper for the dining room but we had lots of pictures to hang and I felt that wasn’t going to look good. I suppose it would have been ok with gilt framed oil paintings of ancient ancestors, but that wasn’t what we had to put up. My friend tried to get me to take out a second mortgage to have this from de Gournay and do the bathroom in similar style to the one illustrated, and for a moment I was tempted, in fact everything on the de Gournay site could turn a girl’s head, but there’s the pesky need for a Euromillions win first …..
elephant wallpaper
View attachment 10715

I love the lighting here. Now I am scratching my head about how I could make something similar.