How to Hang Temporary Wallpaper
I have to admit that I was super excited about the thought of creating yet another nursery for Wilder with our move. Kids’ rooms are my absolute favorite to work on, so while I was sad to let go of that Myersville nursery that I poured so much love into, I was excited to create a totally new space for my baby boy. While I was excited to reimagine a nursery for Wilder, I did plan on working mostly with what we already had because that method works for my budget and is extremely gratifying. A couple of months ago, BDarling Decor reached out to me to see if I’d like a pair of their gorgeous blackout curtain panels for Wilder’s room. That message led me down the rabbit hole of their website and I came across so many adorable temporary wallpapers and fell in love! I knew that wallpaper would give the room the special zing I was looking for, change it dramatically, and ease my feelings of grief over losing his wallpapered closet. Today I am going to share with you all of the progress in Wilder’s nursery, and show you how to hang temporary wallpaper (which is pretty darn easy!). This post is not sponsored by B Darling Decor, but they were kind enough to supply me with the wallpaper and curtains for this project. This post also contains some affiliate links.
Oh my gosh, I love that paper so much! But before I share with you how to hang it and more photos, I want to show you where we started in this room. First of all, let’s go way back to the listing photo. We have not painted this room yet, but the color is a warm gray as opposed to what it reads below.
When we first moved in, we set his room up immediately. After a couple weeks of napping on the go and sleeping at different hotels and houses, we wanted him to have a sense of normalcy, and to have his crib back right away. We put his dresser under the window, his changing table on the opposite side, and the crib on the far wall.
It was a fine set up, but it really didn’t make the most of the space and it was pretty boring. With a name like Wilder, he needed a room that was anything but. After living here for a couple of months and seeing what worked for us and what didn’t, it was time to make some hard decisions. While I loved his dresser so so much, it wasn’t working in the space. It was a little too wide under the window, it wouldn’t fit in the closet like it did in his old room, and we just didn’t need the clothes storage as much as we needed toys and books for him to have easy access to. Secondly, the wall hanging over his changing table became something he’d grab for constantly, and it was beginning to drive me a little batty. We have a very mobile crawler now, and we needed a room that suited his needs, especially because he and I spend much of our day in here on the floor. With all of these changes needing to happen, I decided it was time to really start tackling his room and creating a space for my soon to be toddler.
When B Darling Decor reached out a couple of months ago about their curtains, that’s when everything was really set in motion. I selected a pair of their blackout curtains that truly worked with everything we already had in his room… neutrals with blue. The Beau blackout panels were a perfect fit… shades of watercolor indigos and blues, dramatic but soft, and I felt they were something that could grow with him.
Once the curtains were chosen, as I mentioned earlier, I scoped out the huge selection of temporary wallpaper B Darling Decor offers and fell in love with SO many! I narrowed my choices to 6 and took to my instagram stories for voting, sharing an image of each paired with the curtains as I wanted to show people how they would look together. Per voting, the Barret wallpaper featuring bears was the number one pick. The one that had been pulling on my own heartstrings all along came out 5th out of 6…. womp womp womp.
However, I decided to follow my gut on this one, and go with the paper that spoke to me from the get go, and that was the Baldwin paper which featured all sorts of pine trees in black silhouettes. I loved the simple color palette, graphic pop, and the Scandinavian feel.
As of now, I also have it in my mind that his big boy room will be black, white, wood, and some pop of color, so this paper will work well into that future room I’m imagining.
Now that you understand my choices, let’s talk about the wallpaper process. As you know, I wallpapered Wilder’s closet in his old nursery with traditional paste on wallpaper so I now have experience both with traditional and temporary/removable. I honestly think both methods are not too bad, but removable has much easier take down, which makes it great for kids’ spaces, if you change your mind a lot like I do, or if you’re a renter.
Let’s start at the very beginning in this process, with ordering. How much should you order? B Darling Decor makes it super easy, and all I had to do was enter in the height and length of my wall, and they calculated how many panels I would need. Hooray! Barely any math required!
All of their papers are made to order, so it does take a little time to get to you, but not too bad. You just need to allow some time for that, about 2 weeks. Once the paper arrived, I set it aside in Wilder’s closet, and bribed Emmy with a shopping trip to Target if she’d watch him the following weekend while I wallpapered. (Most of my productive time is during his naps, but clearly I couldn’t be in his room hanging paper while he napped.) However, much to Emmy’s dismay, I got a crazy notion one morning after probably too much coffee that NOW IS THE TIME. I had to hang that paper and I could not wait. Do you know that feeling?
I set to work reading the instructions carefully. This is SOOOO important! I tend to just sort of skim directions, but since I had no experience with temporary wallpaper, I read. I’m glad I did because this wallpaper is very different from traditional. It’s sent in panels rather than on one roll, and it directs you to start from the left and work your way to the right (many traditional papers tell you to start in the center).
The panels are clearly labeled on the back A & B. Start with an A panel all the way into the left edge of the wall. As it turned out, my walls weren’t totally straight, so I pulled it over a little farther than the edge so that I didn’t miss any coverage. Below you can see that it wraps around the corner just slightly. This is no big deal because you will trim it all with an exacto knife at the end.
I started in the top left corner, peeling back about 18″ of the wallpaper’s backing, and hanging as straight as I could, leaving about an inch of excess at the top, again to allow for the wall and ceiling line’s unevenness. Below you can see at the top of the wall the inch of paper.
After I had the top of the panel securely attached to the wall, I continued to peel the backing about 12-18″ at a time, and using the wallpaper tool B Darling included to smooth our air bubbles. With the tool, I pressed diagonally downward to the right. (Also this photo makes it look like my seams don’t line up, but they do, so I am not sure why it looks that way!)
With each panel, there was also excess at the bottom which would be trimmed later as well.
As I worked over to the right, I began again at the top of the wall, leaving a little excess to trim, and lined up my seams.
I worked onward until I was finally into that right corner where the wall meets the next wall. As you can see, I worked with Wilder crawling around on his floor playing, keeping all of the tools out of his reach, and still wearing my pajamas. My point is, if this hot mess of a mama can do it while keeping an eye on a baby, anyone can do hang removable wallpaper.
The last step, and you can save this for last or go panel by panel, is to trim. I used a razor blade because my exacto knife is still in a box somewhere, but I would recommend an exacto for sure. The razor blade was ok, but not as smooth. All you do to trim is follow the edge or corner and just press right into the corner as the blade glides. Once it’s cut, the paper peels off the wall very easily.
I finished papering this wall in under 2 hours. I know that because I started it around 8 am, and by 9:30 Wilder was definitely ready for a nap. I quickly finished that last panel so that I could get him down. (That’s also why I don’t have as many pictures of my last panel going up!!!)
I figure it’s never too early to introduce a baby to the world of DIY, right?
I was so happy when that wall was complete- not because it was challenging, but because it just made my heart sing.
While I still have to paint the walls in here (most likely white), this project kicked my butt into gear and we really started pulling the room together to function for Wilder.
For starters, I removed the hanging from above the changing table. I replaced it with picture ledges I built for our old bedroom and added all of the books that we love, but that Wilder is not old enough to touch yet (he will happily rip them to shreds!). As I started putting the books up there, I decided to put them in rainbow order and bring a little color to his room. The ordering mirrors his name puzzle stool which he loves to play with.
I really love how the black and white paper pairs with the rainbow books.
Of course, the other side of the room was heavily weighted in blue from the curtains and Wilder’s special banner, so I needed to balance the space and bring color to that side.
As I mentioned, his dresser just wasn’t working for us here. While I loved that piece stylistically more than the changing table sideboard, it was way too low to work as a changing table. We’ll need a changing table for at least another year and a half, so the sideboard won out… function over form! I would not kill my back hunching over a too low changing table. Sadly, I had to say goodbye to the dresser, but happily, it meant I was able to shop for a new piece that would fit our space and needs. I knew that finding a bookcase that fit my space limitations and style desires would be a challenge. I was prepared to settle for something and make it what I wanted, but the stars aligned and I found the perfect midcentury bookcase on craigslist. Would you look at those little brass leg caps, too? That’s one of the features that sold me!
Adding in items to balance the color was easy, because we already had lots of toys and board books he can have access to whenever he wants. We are in need of some book ends, but we’ll add those later. For now, stacked books and a box of oversized wooden dominoes are doing the trick.
Now that all of his books and toys are within his reach, he spends so much time here pulling books off of the shelf for us to read to him.
The other wall in this space I haven’t shown much of is the closet wall. It’s honestly taken up mostly by the closet, and the door to his room also opens into it, so there’s not a whole lot I can do with that space. However, we needed a place to hang his hooded towels, so I reused the accordion rack from his first nursery here.
Of course, as I mentioned, still to do in here is repaint the walls, most likely in a bright white. This room has one west facing window, so it doesn’t get the best daylight and really needs something to brighten it up. (I’d love to hear some other color ideas as well!). Other than that, I am thrilled with the space that we are creating for him; and now that we really know this happy little boy, we’re able to reflect his personality. I never would have imagined using rainbow anything in his space, but my goodness does it suit him. He’s the just got the happiest disposition, and I will never ever forget that he is my rainbow baby, so of course that meaning is special to me. (You can read about my journey here and here.)
Now just because I love this space so much and was a little camera happy, I wanted to share a few more photos with you.
Source List:
- Crib
- Curtains
- Wallpaper
- Cloudy Shag Rug
- Laura Ingalls Wilder Banner
- Bookcase, vintage- similar
- Changing table, vintage- similar
- “Wild” Bear
- Name stool
- Train
- Book Ledges (DIY, but similar here)
- Fish Crib Sheet
- Accordion rack
- Hamper
- Wooden Bear