Can you paint on top of normal wallpaper?

[Rupster]

Can you paint on top of normal wallpaper or will it look rubbish?

I can't decide whether to strip the old paper off or just paint on top of it. I don't think the wall was completely smooth in a few places when I put the wallpaper up.

Help!!

[MissLanaBanana]

Maybe as a stopgap, but I would (and have) lived with old wallpaper while I could save and get the walls skimmed and paint. Looks lovely now! Paint over paper would never look quite as good imo.

[HereIAm20]

yes - you can. Here are some pics of the hall and bedrooms in my house that had paper and we painted over. It is an edwardian house and we thought it might open a can of worms if we tried to remove the paper. Maybe at some point in the future we will take it off and reskim but its turned out fine. In fact the "white" room had a vinyl type paper and was ripped in places but the decorator did a great job of resticking, filling and sanding and you'd never know.

[Outaboutnowt]

Yes you can, my mum does it as the walls are a bit bumpy and uneven in her house. She bought some lining paper which is quite cheap I think, papered the walls then painted it. It looks fine and really neat.

[OurBlanche]

But you have to be careful and to use thin paint. Sometimes it soaks the paper completely, which then wrinkles or pulls off. Test an area that includes a corner or a join, see what happens.

[Rupster]

Thanks for your replies. I'm gonna test an area of the wallpaper first before I do the whole wall.