Wall Coverings

Every room of your home has a background that sets the tone of your house. These backgrounds are your walls. Today's wall covering options are limitless: from paint to wallpaper to leather. Changing the mood of your room has become easy and fun.

Since wallpaper and paint have unlimited possibilities, we have given them their own space. Take a look at the many other options out there for your interior.

Gypsum wallboard (aka plasterboard or drywall) is most common due to the flexibility it provides. It can be a base for wallpaper, ceramic tile, paneling, textured finishes, or simply painted. Gypsum wallboard is sold in panels. It's made of crushed gypsum then papered on one side and natural on the other with the appearance of plaster. Regular gypsum is fire resistant and averages around 15 cents per square foot. You may want to consider paying an extra few pennies for actual fire proof at around 20 cents per square foot and/or waterproof at 30 cents per square foot.

Plank paneling looks natural like solid pine or cedar planks. It is wonderful in appearance and can be worked with in any space. You can install it vertically, horizontally, diagonally, or in a herringbone pattern. Place it on walls, wainscot, accent walls, and ceilings. Plank paneling averages about $3 to $5 per square foot, but will vary depending on the manufacturer.

Sheet paneling comes in many style, patterns, and colors. It can be purchased with or without grooves, real wood veneer or photo finish, light or dark. Sheet paneling is a plywood type of material, which basically mimics plank paneling. It comes in 4'x 8' sheets at a lower cost than plank paneling.

Tile board is similar to sheet paneling with the exception that instead of being made from plywood, it is made from hardboard. It also comes in 4' x 8' sheets. This type of wall covering works well in areas like bathrooms and laundry rooms that have a lot of moisture. Tile board is available in a variety of solid colors and stamped face that give the look of ceramic tile.

Wainscoting adds a lot of character to a room. It is commonly found in the dining room (generally installed a third of the way up the wall and capped by a chair rail), but can now be found in stairways, in the study, on a kitchen island or surrounding a breakfast nook. Use your imagination the possibilities can be endless.

Traditional wainscoting is made of solid wood and uses a system of vertical and horizontal wood members that surround raised or flat wood panels of various styles and sizes. This older system is usually found in older homes because only a seasoned carpenter could properly install it.

Because wainscoting has become so popular, manufacturers have been producing a new raised wainscoting system. This new wainscoting is made up of thin veneers, applied to a dense core of either engineered wood or a unique wheat board core that recycles wheat straw. These can be found in finishes of cherry, oak, maple, and a paint able grade. This wainscoting is very stable. It will not contract and expand in humidity. Other modern systems blend solid wood and plywood raised panels covered with hardwood veneers. This allows for more species of wood like walnut, cherry, poplar, and oak.

If you feel certain that you want to use solid wood in your home, it may be beneficial to check your local yellow pages and find a woodworker in your area that could customize a wainscoting system for you.

Ceramic wall tile has become popular in rooms outside the bath. These tiles now come in more than just glazed and unglazed. They range from deep textured to high-definition relief to hand painted with rugged, aged appearances. Ceramic tile comes in many new shapes so that you can create a mural if you like. Average tile runs from about $2 to $75 per tile, but the range is dramatic depending on variable factors of the tile you choose. The price does not include installation.

Paint, Paint, Paint

Decorating with color is fun. It's never a bad idea to let the pros give you a hand in choosing your colors. If you can't find the colors you want, have them custom mixed for you. Most all paint retailers have the ability to match any color you take them. They can match a color in you favorite pillow or a paint chip from and expensive designer brand.

According to the American Society for Interior Design (ASID) homeowners choose comfort shades such as red, which is very popular for the dining room, and soft blues and lilacs, which are serene. Once you pick a shade for each room you can begin to create an environment that truly represents your personality and tastes. Color is known to have psychological effects, so you'll want to choose your colors carefully. The "warm" shades on the color wheel, including red, orange, and yellow, will make a room energetic and welcoming, and stimulate the appetite; the "cool" colors, such as blues and greens, are conducive to relaxation and sleep. This may be why red, for example, is so popular in dining rooms and blue finds its way into many bedrooms. Consciously or unconsciously, we tend to gravitate to colors appropriate for our emotional needs in our rooms.

Don't overlook neutrals as you are choosing your colors. Neutrals are browns, tans, grays, whites, and blacks. These colors help to balance the space and other colors in your home.

There are hundreds of variations on the color white and it is a favorite on home walls. White can have the slightest tint of any warm or cool color to give a nice creamy color to keep the walls light.

Regardless of what color you choose, test it first. Colors can look much different once they are on the walls. Test at least a one-foot section before doing the whole wall. Paint will be the lowest cost wall covering you will most likely find.

Faux Finishes

Faux is French for false, and faux finishing is used to make surfaces and objects look distressed and aged. It is also used to mimic materials like stone, marble, wood, and leather. When using paint as your wall covering, faux finishing can add the view and texture you want to spruce up your rooms. These techniques can be a bit difficult, so it may be a good idea to request a sample board and work closely with the artist so you know what you are getting. Faux finish prices vary depending on the size of the room, labor, and the amount of detail. If you would like to try this yourself, all the materials needed can be found in most high scale paint or hardware stores. Some of the materials you will need are brushes, finishing tools, cheesecloth, stencils, trowels, and wood graining tools. The old technique of using a sponge and rag are no longer used.

Faux finishing is completely unique and custom. Every finish is different. It is also very durable. The technique is done on eggshell base coat with washable paints, so clean up is easy.

Really Know Your Colors

It can be fun choosing your home colors. It can also be very rewarding if you know the basics on choosing your palette. Knowing a little about the basic color codes can be very helpful.

Color affects mood and emotions.

Colors are broadly divided into two categories - warm and cool.

Warm colors (red, orange and yellow) make us feel warm in a psychological way.

Cool colors (blue, green and purple) convey peace and relaxation.

Colors have psychological meanings. Understanding them can help match each room's colors to a personal taste and the room's purpose.

Color can change the perceived size of a room. To make a room seem larger use a light color scheme.

When selecting a new color scheme, bring home a variety of samples to view. Stick a color chip to your surface and look at it at different times and in different weather. Changes in light can give the same color many different looks.


Types of Wallpaper
Wallpaper is a very common alternative option to paining a room. It provides a very large variety of patterns, colors, and finishes to choose from. The wallpaper can be dramatic, whimsical, comforting, stimulating, formal, casual, and on and on. Wallpaper has the largest selection to allow you to show your personality in any form, be it traditional, transitional, contemporary, or just plain 'off the wall'.

There are 10 basic types of wallpaper from which to choose:

1. Printed wallpaper - general category with printed patterns.
2. Unbacked fabric - most difficult because you have to work carefully to smooth out the fabric as you apply it to the wall.
3. Relief - raised texture that you can feel.
4. Solid vinyl - most durable wall covering and because it's waterproof it's ideal for very humid areas.
5. Vinyl coated - most common, made of paper but with a protective coat of vinyl that makes it ideal (and allows scrubbing) for kitchens, bathrooms or wherever kids or pets might brush against a wall. Vinyl coated wallpaper is usually strippable, which makes it easy to pull off a wall and re-paper with a new pattern.
6. Flocked - usually considered "old fashioned" which includes a raised felt pattern that contrasts with the background color.
7. Foil - known best by the brand name "Mylar" can be difficult to work with because it shows imperfections in the wall surface and because it wrinkles easily.
8. Cork-faced - thicker because they have a surface of cork. They give a room a cozy, dark and woodsy effect.
9. Grass cloth/burlap - exotic, but shouldn't be used in high-traffic areas or where there's high humidity, because they can stain.
10. Paper-backed fabric - high quality looks of a fabric wall covering but can be installed with the ease of a vinyl-coated paper.

Helpful tips: Consider pasting a liner on the wall before applying the wall covering. The liner hides many imperfections and makes it much easier to strip later. If you choose a wallpaper pattern that repeats, you'll have to order more than you would for a random pattern, a vertical pattern (like stripes) or a solid color because you'll have to shift each strip of the wallpaper to match up the patterns at the edges, which makes for considerable waste.

Wallpaper is back in a big way
Wallpaper is now very common again. The top trends of the modern day are murals and textured walls. Examples of these are streets scenes, baseball fields, and children's storybook fantasies. Murals have become a highly chosen option in customizing a room. Pretty much anything that can be glued can be put on the walls and turned into a mural: cloth, sand, glass, and etc. Wallpaper averages $20 to $30 per roll, but specialty wall coverings can cost more than $200 a yard.

Don't Forget to Look Up
Most people forget to consider their ceilings as part of the home decor. There are tons of options available to decorate the ceiling to add personality and appeal to your home. Knowing this, you can do something besides leaving it boring plain non-textured white.

Drop ceilings are attractive and easy to install. These are available in 2' x 2' and 4' x 4' panels that rest in a grid suspended from the ceiling joists. This makes it easy to level up a ceiling and create easy access to pipes and wiring. To create a sleeker look, use tiles or planks that mount directly to the ceiling, which also allows more, headroom and design options.

The most common ceiling covering is the gypsum wallboard. Its smooth surface allows for painting or base for popcorn or other textured finish. You can also use texture paint to achieve popcorn, stucco, sand, or other texture effects. Textured paint is a thick paint form infused with particles that give a three dimensional look. It can be mixed before hand with your paint color or painted after it dries. You can get a rustic look by applying plank paneling. The things mentioned in this article should show you the multitude of endless options available to create the look you want.

Source thehousedesigners.com