A difficulty as old as wall coverings themselves is the question of how many rolls or sheets of wallpaper you should buy in order to redecorate a room. This is especially important when buying luxury wall coverings from a wallpaper specialist.
Buy too little, and you do not have enough to cover all of the surfaces you like, often necessitating another order. However, buying too much means a lot of leftover paper you may struggle to use even if you plan to patch up any errors or later damage.
Whilst calculators do exist, there are also some rules of thumb you can use to help ensure you have enough wallpaper to get the job right first time.
Break Out The Tape Measure
The first step is to measure the width and height of each wall. Multiplying the two together will get you the total area that needs to be covered.
It is often best to measure both the total wall area, as well as the area that is going to be covered, which is typically from the top of the skirting board to the dado. This gives you some rough estimates to work with.
Always round up to the nearest whole number, as it is better to have too much than not enough wallpaper, and measure each section of wall separately if you are working with awkwardly shaped rooms.
Do Not Forget The Repeat
If you are buying wallpaper rolls with a pattern repeat you are going to need extra paper to ensure that the pattern matches and there aren’t overly obvious seams.
A general rule of thumb is to take your figures and add ten per cent to give yourself enough room for error as well as allow you to wallpaper around windows, doors and other room features.
Check The Roll Sizing
The standard for wallpaper is 52cm wide by 10m long, for a total area of 5.2 square metres, but bear in mind that some wallpaper rolls are calculated differently to this so to get the area of each roll, multiply the width by the length.
Once you have this, divide that area by the area you plan to cover with the wallpaper, add ten per cent and you have the amount of wallpaper you need to buy.