Is painting over wallpaper a bad idea?

[OldEnoughandUglyEnough]

Moving house soon and we’re planning on redecorating slowly over the next few years, one room at a time. The lounge won’t be first on our list, it has cream wallpaper with a subtle pattern that is not totally offensive, but will probably start to get on my nerves over time, would it make it harder to remove in the long run if we were to paint over it for the time being?

It depends on the type of wallpaper, some are made to be painted over, others cannot be painted over.
You could try painting a small section that would usually be covered up, like behind the sofa, and see how it turns out. If you use matt emulsion I wouldn't think it would make it any harder to remove the wallpaper.
If the wallpaper is shiny the paint might not stick.
Many years ago my parents had anaglypta wallpaper that had been painted over several times, and I don't remember it being difficult to remove, not like the woodchip wallpaper they had in another room.

Good idea yes, we could try a section! I’m trying to weigh up how long I could live with the wallpaper versus maybe stripping it straight away and risking finding walls that need replastering underneath. We wouldn’t be getting a plasterer in for a while yet so which would be worse to live with, wallpaper I don’t like or bare walls in need of plastering.

We used Zinsser wallpaper cover paint, used 1 coat of that then 1 coat white emulsion and it covered really well, can barely see the old pattern (which was dark!), once the colour is on there won't be any sign of the old pattern.
The wallpaper cover paint is oil based though so means cleaning bushes etc with white spirit, bit of a faff but worth it to avoid stripping walls! Normal emulsion straight onto wallpaper can cause bubbling

The recommended professional way would be to strip it. That said, I've painted over wallpaper myself. One way to make it safer is to apply primer first so the moisture from the paint doesn't get into the wallpaper and worst case make everything come crashing down.

I have painted over a lot of wallpaper, even wallpaper that doesn’t say it can be painted over. As pp said try a hidden section first, you have nothing to lose. The wallpapers I have painted over needed 2 coats of paint. I even painted over an old patterned wallpaper with white and the pattern has never shown through. The wallpaper needs to be in a fairly good state of repair.

Our before and after (wallpaper was on when we bought)
Can just see the odd patchyness through the white but as i say the coloured emulsion will cover it

They often bubble up and look quite alarming but usually sink back and it's unnoticeable

Use a Zinseer primer first and it may well turn out absolutely fine.

The danger is if the paper gets wet with the solvent of the paint, it could loosen the glue that's holding the paper on. However, it is certainly possible if the paint and the paper are both suitable - our bathroom is has white walls, and when we moved in there was also a somewhat grubby and manky bathroom cabinet that I wanted to get rid of so I removed it and found that the wall behind was a lurid 1980s yellow and orange wallpaper, and all the white walls were the same paper but painted over with a white matt emulsion. It was fine - obviously we redecorated eventually but there were no problems with the painted wallpaper while we got around to sorting that.

@whoruntheworldgirls

We used Zinsser wallpaper cover paint, used 1 coat of that then 1 coat white emulsion and it covered really well, can barely see the old pattern (which was dark!), once the colour is on there won't be any sign of the old pattern. The wallpaper cover paint is oil based though so means cleaning bushes etc with white spirit, bit of a faff but worth it to avoid stripping walls! Normal emulsion straight onto wallpaper can cause bubbling

I used this, too (though 2 coats - it was a very bold wallpaper pattern!). It's worked really well - can't tell that there's wallpaper underneath at all.

Previous owners painted over wallpaper and it started cracking and coming away in corners.
Quick fix, yeah I'd do it with the right stuff but it's a ball ache to get off to do properly.

Never heard of the primer before, I’ll look into that thank you! I think we will want the walls and ceiling skimmed eventually so my main concern is how hard the wallpaper will be to remove later on

We moved into a house that's covered In wallpaper, it's awful and drives us crazy. We got the living room done and he stripped one wall and left the rest and just painted over. We've just done our daughters room and again stripped one and left the rest... they ones we stripped were for feature walls and the rest we just painted over.

it dosent look too bad... we're having our bedroom done soon and I don't know what they'll do then