Painting over old fashioned textured wallpaper

[TaupePanda]

Hello

After a very long journey trying to buy a new house (we live in a very hot area where everything flies off the shelf), we have finally had an offer accepted on a pretty tatty house, that has lots of potential.

It is no chain and could be wrapped up in a matter of weeks (hopefully), so we are making immediate plans. As such, this post will probably be the first of many!

My question is... has anyone successfully painted over old fashioned textured wallpaper and made it look nice. What sort of paint or prep did you need?

For context, it is on tight, and in good condition (no tears or loose bits). It is all around the hall and landings below the mid-line dado rail. It has a sort of floral pattern to it - looks almost victorian (though obviously much newer).

Taking it off is a reasonably big job and almost certainly means some plastering underneath it. That impacts the dado rail and skirtings so suddenly you could be in for a whole other list of jobs, if you take it off. It would be better to keep it in our opinion, for right now. We also have a 3 and 5 year old who have trashed our current house (bike marks on walls, chips from bashing scooters against skirtings etc). So, for right now, we aren't looking to renovate to a super high standard but make good what is in place.

That being said, I'd like it to look somewhat nice given the cost of the house itself!

Any pointers would be great - I know you can google these things but sometimes what google says and what actually works IRL are totally different things. TIA

It’s paintable ime, but doesn’t make it look less dated. It’s just clean and fresh once painted.
We did finally strip ours off -funnily enough the pics came up earlier on my iPad, it was a hell of a job-we just put lining paper up and painted over that. It was effective at covering the cracks enough (along with filler) that we didn’t feel the need to re plaster, and our walls were awful underneath the textured paper!

This was what we had.

In older houses this type of paper is often hiding a multitude of issue with the plaster, etc. If have the time, energy and finances to deal with that then get rid of it. Otherwise, it is usually easy to paint over.

I've done this several times in different houses. Once your furniture is in and you've got pictures up, you stop noticing it.

As far as painting it is concerned, does it already have paint on it? If it's older paint it might be oil based in which case it might not take a standard water based emulsion so a tester pot would be a good idea first. If the paint doesn't adhere, I'd go to a 'trade' decorators' centre, like Johnstones, and ask for advice on a suitable primer. They're very helpful and I think they may have a helpline.

If there are any dings, blend them in with filler. If there are obvious gaps between each strip of paper, you can also smooth them out with filler if you can be bothered!

If it is anaglypta or similar, you can also usually still get specific patterns if you need to fill in any sections. I had to do this where I had a door removed in my sitting room. Oddly, enough the 'mid century' pattern in there is now apparently very stylish again!

Yes I successfully painted over wood chip. I used matt Tikkurila paint. Prep involved filling any gaps in the paper but you said there's no need.

I bought the paint from the London Decorator Merchants who mixed it to the colour I wanted and delivered it for free.

It was a while ago but if I remember correctly, it only needed one coat.

I used matt Tikkurila paint

I have to say this is excellent paint, we only discovered it fairly recently. The opacity is excellent. Only two coats needed where dulux ‘once’ needed 3 coats, and we could still see the old peach colour coming through!

I have painted it and it does look fresh and clean which was enough for me. I agree the type of paint already on it will impact what you can do.

Everything dates and with young children you might be better waiting for having a perfect hallway until a later point.

I'm sure ehrn people are bored of thier wood panelling, they will take it off and cover twith textured wallpaper

It's very good, I recommend it to everyone.

Thanks all. The paper doesn't look like its ever been painted but it is hard to tell given how dirty it is. It is an ex-rental and it has not been cared for! That said, when we inspected the walls, the paper seemed in pretty decent condition - like a poster said it is probably hiding something underneath though!
I'll try the Tikkurila paint when it comes to it, that gets great reviews online too

You can, but I would be tempted to address it fully. We couldn't afford to do it properly when we moved in, but did remove the wallpaper and added lining paper and painted everything which did freshen it up. However, we are now slowly going round and getting it replastered. Ideally we would have done that to start with, so I would say if you can, go straight to that. If you don't though, just painting definitely helps.

Agree with seeking advice on paint type. Painting over the wallpaper sounds really practical with the little ones and mid century is fashionable again so I'd definitely paint it t rather than remove just yet. as my dad said, the plaster may look like hell underneath, save yoursen a job for now. a pale Matt colour will make the pattern as subtle as possible. An old shared house had anaglypta painted maroon and it really made it stand out!

Is it definitely textured wallpaper as it sounds like it’s Lincrusta?

I'm about to put anaglypta back into my hallway and stairs well to hide the bumpy walls and where it gets dinged. They have some nice geometric type ones now if you look painted in a darker colour they seem to look quite good and not too 90s magnolia.