What is The Stigma of Wallpaper?

What is the stigma of wallpaper? And why does wallpaper carry such a negative stigma when selling your home?  Because wallpaper is subjective décor. Wallpaper usually only appeals to the person who chose it. If you are selling your home, unfortunately, wallpaper rarely appeals to potential buyers.

Add in the unknown fear factor of how difficult the wallpaper will be to remove . And Voila!  You have the “stigma of wallpaper”!

It’s critical that your wallpaper job was done correctly and the walls were prepared with sizing or primer to allow for removal.  At best, it is a time consuming and messy procedure, but a manageable one.   However, if your walls were not properly prepared, or the wallpaper itself of lesser quality, it is a tedious job. It’s a frustrating and labor-intensive process.

If you or anyone that has ever had to remove wallpaper that wasn’t installed properly, they will never forget it!  And, if you don’t know how to remove improperly installed wallpaper you stand the risk of gauging and destroying your drywall in the process. If you don’t know how to remove poorly installed wallpaper, you may end up gauging your walls. Unfortunately, you will only end up needing to repair any walls damaged in the process!

One of the many facets of my business may include a project such as wallpaper removal. It can be part of the process in helping a seller prepare and stage their home for sale. Or it may be a step for a homeowner requesting a room makeover. Either way, the wallpaper must be removed for the project to proceed.

You also need to know that removing the glue left on the walls after removing wallpaper is a critical step in the wallpaper removal process. Also, you need to know that interior latex (water-based) paint will reactivate the glue! You obviously do not want to do this!

My exceptional team of skilled painters handles not only painting but drywall repair and wallpaper removal projects.  Recently we were working at a beautiful home in need of wallpaper removal.

My professional painters hit upon one of the worst wallpaper removal scenarios! The paper was coming off in minuscule pieces as was the backing behind the paper. The wallpaper previous to this application had not been properly removed. Unfortunately, this was leaving much of that backing and glue on the walls. In combination with some paint over the old glue, this was adding more complexity to this already painstaking process. Needless to say, our progress slowed down immediately to a crawl.

It took days to properly complete the process. Nevertheless, my painters did their customary A1 job. This is why I have come to depend upon them for my projects and all ended very well.  Likewise, this is also why it pays to hire a skilled professional!

I often recommend you remove your wallpaper as a step in preparing your home to sell. You need to remember the reasons that you don’t want to do it. Because it is too much work to do yourself or because you don’t want to pay someone to do it. These are the exact same reasons your buyers don’t want to do it.  And they will definitely consider the sight of wallpaper a strike against your home. Wallpaper removal is a lot of work! Do it first and do it right. And before you put your home on the market to remove the negative stigma of wallpaper from your home!