Contents1. Introduction....................................................................................................................................2

2. History............................................................................................................................................3

3. Types of Wallpapers...................................................................................................................5

Woodchip...................................................................................................................................5

Pulps...........................................................................................................................................6

Washable....................................................................................................................................6

Vinyl-coated................................................................................................................................7

Anaglypta....................................................................................................................................8

Embossed...................................................................................................................................9

Blown vinyl.................................................................................................................................9

Hand-printed............................................................................................................................11

4. Modern developments.................................................................................................................12

Custom wallpaper printing...........................................................................................................12

Seismic wallpaper.........................................................................................................................13

5. Installation instructions................................................................................................................14

6. Wall paper adhesive.....................................................................................................................16

7. Removal of wallpaper...................................................................................................................17

8. Pictures.........................................................................................................................................19

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1. Introduction

Wallpaper is a kind of material used to cover and decorate the interior walls of homes, offices, cafes, government buildings, museums, post offices, and other buildings; it is one aspect of interior decoration. It is usually sold in rolls and is put onto a wall using wallpaper paste. Wallpapers can come plain as "lining paper" (so that it can be painted or used to help cover uneven surfaces and minor wall defects thus giving a better surface), textured (such as Anaglypta, which refers to a range of paintable textured wallcoverings made from paper or vinyl. It is produced on traditional paper and paste-the-wall substrates), with a regular repeating pattern design, or, much less commonly today, with a single non-repeating large design carried over a set of sheets.

Wallpaper printing techniques include surface printing, gravure printing, silk screen-printing, rotary printing, and digital printing. Wallpaper is made in long rolls, which are hung vertically on a wall. Patterned wallpapers are designed so that the pattern "repeats", and thus pieces cut from the same roll can be hung next to each other so as to continue the pattern without it being easy to see where the join between two pieces occurs. In the case of large complex patterns of images this is normally achieved by starting the second piece halfway into the length of the repeat, so that if the pattern going down the roll repeats after 24 inches the next piece sideways is cut from the roll to begin 12 inches down the pattern from the first. The number of times the pattern repeats horizontally across a roll does not matter for this purpose. A single pattern can be issued in several different colors.

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2. History

The main historical techniques are: hand-painting, woodblock printing (overall the most common), stencilling, and various types of machine-printing. The first three all date back to before 1700.

Wallpaper, using the printmaking technique of woodcut, gained popularity in Renaissance Europe amongst the emerging gentry. The social elite continued to hang large tapestries on the walls of their homes, as they had in the Middle Ages. These tapestries added color to the room as well as providing an insulating layer between the stone walls and the room, thus retaining heat in the room. However, tapestries were extremely expensive and so only the very rich could afford them. Less well-off members of the elite, unable to buy tapestries due either to prices or wars preventing international trade, turned to wallpaper to brighten up their rooms.

Early wallpaper featured scenes similar to those depicted on tapestries, and large sheets of the paper were sometimes hung loose on the walls, in the style of tapestries, and sometimes pasted as today. Prints were very often pasted to walls, instead of being framed and hung, and the largest sizes of prints, which came in several sheets, were probably mainly intended to be pasted to walls. Some important artists made such pieces - notably Albrecht Dürer, who worked on both large picture prints and also ornament prints - intended for wall-hanging. The largest picture print was The

Triumphal Arch commissioned by the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I and completed in 1515. This measured a colossal 3.57 by 2.95 m, made up of 192 sheets, and was printed in a first edition of 700 copies, intended to be hung in palaces and, in particular, town halls, after hand-coloring.

Very few samples of the earliest repeating pattern wallpapers survive, but there are a large number of old master prints, often in engraving of repeating or repeatable decorative patterns. These are called ornament prints and were intended as models for wallpaper makers, among other uses.

England and France were leaders in European wallpaper manufacturing. Among the earliest known samples is one found on a wall from England and is printed on the back of a London proclamation of 1509. It became very popular in England following Henry VIII's excommunication from the Catholic Church - English aristocrats had always imported tapestries from Flanders and Arras, but Henry VIII's split with the Catholic Church had resulted in a fall in trade with Europe. Without any tapestry manufacturers in England, English gentry and aristocracy alike turned to wallpaper.

During the Protectorate under Oliver Cromwell, the manufacture of wallpaper, seen as a frivolous item by the Puritan government, was halted. Following the Restoration of Charles II, wealthy people across England began demanding wallpaper again - Cromwell's regime had imposed a boring culture on people, and following his death, wealthy people began purchasing comfortable domestic items which had been banned under the Puritan state.

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18th century

In 1712, during the reign of Queen Anne, a wallpaper tax was introduced which was not abolished until 1836. By the mid-eighteenth century, Britain was the leading wallpaper manufacturer in Europe, exporting vast quantities to Europe in addition to selling on the middle-class British market. However this trade was seriously disrupted in 1755 by the Seven Years' War and later the Napoleonic Wars, and by a heavy level of duty on imports to France.

In 1748 the British Ambassador to Paris decorated his salon with blue flock wallpaper, which then became very fashionable there. In the 1760s the French manufacturer Jean-Baptiste Réveillon hired designers working in silk and tapestry to produce some of the most subtle and luxurious wallpaper ever made. His sky blue wallpaper with fleurs-de-lys was used in 1783 on the first balloons by the Montgolfier brothers. The landscape painter Jean-Baptiste Pillement discovered in 1763 a method to use fast colors.

Hand-blocked wallpapers like these use hand-carved blocks and by the 18th century designs include panoramic views of antique architecture, exotic landscapes and pastoral subjects, as well as repeating patterns of stylized flowers, people and animals.

In 1785 Christophe-Philippe Oberkampf had invented the first machine for printing coloured tints on sheets of wallpaper. In 1799 Louis-Nicolas Robert patented a machine to produce continuous lengths of paper, the forerunner of the Fourdrinier machine. This ability to produce continuous lengths of wallpaper now offered the prospect of novel designs and nice tints being widely displayed in drawing rooms across Europe.

High-quality wallpaper made in China became available from the later part of the 17th century; this was entirely hand-painted and very expensive. It can still be seen in rooms in palaces and grand houses including Nymphenburg Palace, Łazienki Palace, Chatsworth House, Temple Newsam, Lissan House, and Erddig. It was made up to 1.2 m wide. English, French and German manufacturers imitated it, usually beginning with a printed outline which was colored in by hand, a technique sometimes also used in later Chinese papers.

Towards the end of the 18th century the fashion for scenic wallpaper revived in both England and France, leading to some enormous panoramas, like the 1804 20 strip wide panorama, Sauvages de la Mer du Pacifique (Savages of the Pacific), designed by the artist Jean-Gabriel Charvet for the French manufacturer Joseph Dufour et Cie showing the Voyages of Captain Cook. This famous so called "papier peint" wallpaper is still in situ in Ham House, Peabody Massachusetts. It was the largest panoramic wallpaper of its time, and marked the burgeoning of a French industry in panoramic wallpapers.

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3. Types of WallpapersThere are a number of different types of wallpaper available, these give different types of

surface finish and range in price from under £1 to many hundreds of pounds per roll. Understanding the different types of wall paper will help you choose the correct one for your needs.

Lining Paper

This isn't finishing wallpaper as it does not give a decorative finish, lining paper is applied to bare walls or ceilings in preparation for painting or papering with decorative wallpaper. The purpose of lining paper generally used to: to cover minor imperfections on a surface before painting it or hide a strong color previously applied to walls or ceilings before a lighter color wallpaper or paint is to be applied.

When the lining paper is to be covered by wallpaper, the general rule is to hang the lining paper in the opposite direction to the top paper.

WoodchipWoodchip is a relatively inexpensive wallpaper consisting of small chips of wood (thus the

name) on the finished side of a basic paper base. A number of grades of Woodchip paper are available, these range from fine chips of wood to quite coarse pieces. Woodchip is ideal for hiding small defects in walls/ceiling and is usually finished by applying paint after the paper has fully dried. The finish is therefore depends upon the choice of paint used, and depending on the type of paint originally applied, an inexpensive facelift can subsequently be had by repainting.

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PulpsThis probably the cheapest type of patterned wallpaper available, it is just a pattern printed

onto a basic paper. Pulps are easy to hang (and strip off) although care needs to be taken when hanging them to avoid over stretch them - over stretching any wallpaper will make matching the pattern on adjacent strips difficult, and pulps will stretch very easily.

WashableThese must not to be confused with Vinyl wallpapers described below. Washable wallpapers

have a thin plastic transparent coating covering the pattern printed on to the base pulp paper. This coating gives them more resistant to stains and marks and allows them to be regularly wiped down with a damp cloth.

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Vinyl-coatedUsually these consist of a pattern printed on to a thin skin of vinyl (plastic) with a paper backing behind. Vinyl papers are easy to hang and fairly easy to strip. They are quite tough and washable making them ideal for use in kitchens and bathrooms.

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Vinyl

These are tougher than vinyl-coated wallpapers (described above) as the vinyl skin on the front of the base paper is thicker. Hanging Vinyl wallpaper usually involves pasting the wall and then hanging the wallpaper on to it. Stripping Vinyl wallpaper can be hard as the layer of vinyl makes them largely impervious to water. Vinyl wallpapers are tough, washable and ideal for kitchens and bathrooms.

AnaglyptaAnaglypta is, in fact, a trade name, but it has become common practice to use it as a generic

name for plain embossed patterned papers. The amount and design of patterns vary - from light, random 'line' patterns (which can be treated as random, and do not require the pattern on adjacent strips to be lined up) to heavily embossed geometric patterns which do need adjacent strips aligned - the range of patterns available is quite vast. Like Woodchip, Anaglypta wallpapers are ideal for hiding defects in walls and are usually finished off with a coat of paint.

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EmbossedThese are quite similar to Anaglypta but with a colored pattern as a decorative finish rather

than the plain paper finish. Normally they can be overpainted; either at a later time when the pattern has become faded and requires a facelift, or from the time it is first hung.

Blown vinylThese are similar to the embossed wallpaper described above but the finish is vinyl plastic

which gives it a tough finish. Being plastic, these papers cannot be overpainted.

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Flocks

Flock wallpapers are one of the oldest types of wallpaper used, the pattern consists of fibres which feel and look rather like velvet. Traditionally flock wallpapers have been widely hung in pubs, clubs, restaurants etc., but can be used in any home if used with taste. In daily use they are easily marked as the natural tendency for people is to reach out and touch them.

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Hand-printedHand-printing was the original way wallpapers were decorated; a large printing block

(covering the width of the wallpaper, and the height of a complete pattern repeat) is repeatedly applied by hand along the length of the wallpaper - this is repeated for each color in the pattern. They can still be purchases but cost a lot of money - hardly surprising with the amount of labor involved in their manufacture. Usually, hand-printed wallpapers come untrimmed and are not widely available off-the-shelf - they are often purchased to special order to match in with existing papers hung in old properties. When used, they should only be hung by a professional paperhanger as they require a lot of skill.

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4. Modern developments

Custom wallpaper printingNew digital inkjet printing technologies using ultraviolet (UV) cured inks are being used for

custom wallpaper production. Very small runs can be made, even a single wall. Photographs or digital art are output onto blank wallpaper material. Typical installations are corporate lobbies, restaurants, athletic facilities, and home interiors. This gives a designer the ability to give a space the exact look and feel desired.

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High-tech wallpaper

New types of wallpaper under development or entering the market in the early 21st century include wallpaper that blocks certain mobile phone and WiFi signals, in the interest of privacy. The wallpaper is coated with a silver ink which forms crystals that block outgoing signals.

The Spanish firm Think Big Factory has announced that they are developing a wallpaper which also serves as a computer interface, using projectors, webcams, and motion sensors for control. As of 2013, The hardware was complete but only 20 per cent of the software was finished, according to Think Big Factory.

Seismic wallpaperIn 2012, Scientists at the Institute of Solid Construction and Construction Material

Technology at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology announced that they had developed a wallpaper that can help keep a masonry wall from failing in an earthquake. The wallpaper uses glass fibre reinforcement in several directions and a special adhesive which forms a strong bond with the masonry when dry.

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5. Installation instructions

Like paint, wallpaper requires proper surface preparation before application. Additionally wallpaper is not suitable for all areas. For example, bathroom wallpaper may deteriorate rapidly due to excessive steam. Proper preparation includes the repair of any defects in the drywall or plaster and the removal of loose material or old adhesives. For a better finish with thinner papers and poorer quality walls the wall can be cross-lined (horizontally) with lining paper first .Accurate room measurements (length, width, and height) along with number of window and door openings is essential for ordering wallpaper. Large drops, or repeats, in a pattern can be cut and hung more economically by working from alternating rolls of paper.

Besides conventional installation on interior walls and ceilings, wallpapers have been deployed as decorative covering for hatboxes, bandboxes, books, shelves, and window-shades.

STEP 1

Spackle and sandpaper the wall to smooth any imperfections, then apply a coat of wallpaper primer. While it dries, cover a long worktable (or just the floor!) with a clean plastic painter's tarp. Make sure your hands are clean, too.

STEP 2

If you're papering a whole wall, cut vertical strips 4 inches longer than the wall height; once the paper is up, you'll trim the excess. Arrange wallpaper strips side by side on the floor to ensure that the pattern lines up correctly, gently taping them together with painter's tape to temporarily secure them. If you're making a shape (as with the headboard or sconce backing plates), cut it out on a cutting mat with a utility knife.

STEP 3

Use a tape measure and a pencil to mark where on the wall the paper will be placed. For example, mark the top edge of a chair rail or sides of a rectangle.

STEP 4

Pour premixed clear wallpaper glue into a paint roller tray. Use a small paint roller to apply it quickly and evenly to the back of the paper. (Some wallpaper comes pre-pasted, so you can just dampen it according to the manufacturer's instructions.)

STEP 5

Now apply the paper one strip at a time, smoothing each onto the wall from the center outward using an 8-inch plastic smoother. For long strips, use a stepladder and work from the top down; have someone hold the other end as you position it (use this same method for wide chair-rail strips). The seams of side-by-side strips should butt against one another, not overlap; make sure these seams lie flat by using a seam-roller.

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STEP 6

Once a piece is up, you have about 10 to 15 minutes to perfect its placement. Carefully push any bubbles out toward the borders.

STEP 7

Wash off excess glue with a damp natural sponge, continuing to smooth the wallpaper as you go.

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6. Wall paper adhesive

Wallpaper adhesive or wallpaper paste is a specific adhesive, based on modified starch or methylcellulose, used to fix wallpaper to walls.

Wallpaper pastes have a typical shear thinning viscosity and a high wet adhesive tack. These properties are needed to slow down the penetration of the adhesive into the paper and wall, and give slow bonding speed which gives the wallpaper hanger time to line up the wallpaper correctly on the wall. The adhesive is usually sold in pouches or boxes as flakes that are mixed with water to produce the paste, it is also available ready mixed in tubs.

The wallpaper adhesive is applied to the wallpaper to let the moisture of the adhesive soak into and penetrate the paper. The paper will thus expand before hanging rather than on the wall, which would cause vertical bubbles in each panel of wallpaper as the adhesive dried from the edges in. When using nonwoven or fibre-glass wallpaper—paper that does not expand—the adhesive is applied to the wall instead.

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7. Removal of wallpaper

Six tips to remove wallpaper easily:

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Before you begin...

Remove a small section of the wallpaper in an inconspicuous corner first, using a scraper (if you're lucky, there won't be too many layers). This will give you a better idea of how much time it's going to take and if necessary, you can change your plans.

If it’s strippable

Many wallpapers are "strippable," which means they can be removed easily. Pry up a seam edge using a utility knife and tug gently, pulling down at an angle, keeping both hands close to the lifting edge. If it comes off easily, peels in a long sheet and leaves no adhesive residue, then your job will be a simple one-step operation.

Soften the paste

Soak older papers and newer ones applied with standard wallpaper paste. It'll make your job faster. Use warm water and liquid detergent and add a handful of cellulose paste to each bucket of water—it helps to hold the water on the wall. Leave it on for at least 5 minutes, then use a scraper to lift off the paper. Score washable and wipeable wallpapers with a serrated scraper (or an old dinner fork) , so that water can penetrate.

Consider chemicals

Remove wallpaper that's been covered with paint using a chemical stripper designed for textured coatings—but don't forget to wear protective gloves and goggles. You could also try fabric softener; removing old wallpaper is a snap with fabric softener! Just stir 1 cap-full liquid softener into 1 quart (1 liter) water and sponge the solution onto the wallpaper. Let it soak in for 20 minutes, then scrape the paper from the wall. If the wallpaper has a water-resistant coating, score it with a wire-bristle brush before treating with the fabric softener solution.

Try steaming

Consider using a steam wallpaper stripper to tackle materials that are difficult to remove, or if the wall is covered with layers of old paper. It may make your job faster and easier.

Vinyl makes your job easier

Vinyls are usually easier to strip off a wall—the vinyl skin can be pulled from its backing, then the backing soaked away. With some modern papers and vinyls, the backing can be left on the wall as the lining paper for the next wall covering. This only works if the paper is well stuck—if there are any loose areas, strip them off.

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8. Pictures

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