Low ceilings and textured wallpaper

[Housenoob]

We are soon to move into a house that pretty much ticks all boxes. Fantastic location, very large garden, big rooms, potential to extend or convert garage in future. Brilliant schools on our doorstep. This is a long term, 'forever' home for us.

We did compromise on a few things- husband and I always wanted a beautiful period property with high ceilings, dado rails and all that. But hey you can't have everything especially in this ridiculous market, and the house we are buying is a late 50's build with fairly low ceilings and that hideous textured wallpaper literally everywhere- walls and ceiling. Kerb appeal not great but all this can be improved.

Once we move in we will have limited funds for a few months due to the expense of a house move but we want to get started on cosmetic decor straight away.

Anyone got tips for making low ceilings look higher/less oppressive? And also...bearing in mind that the wallpaper is everywhere and we are pretty crap at DIY, should we attempt to remove it all or just suck it up, keep it and just paint? Or will it always look awful no matter how stylish the rest of our decor is? We are also a little scared that the state of the walls underneath the wallpaper may not be amazing so do we really want to open that can of worms...

How many people are going to inspect your wall paper? As long as you like your house, that’s the important thing.

About textured wallpaper, I would ( and have, loads of times) just paint over it. Stripping wallpaper is not fun, and older wallpaper glue seems to have been much stronger than current stuff. Who knows what’s behind it in terms of cracks, plaster peels etc? Leave well alone at least for the time being.

I would use trade paint, it seems to cover far better than domestic quality for this sort of thing. A couple of coats of white or even magnolia , put on with a roller and you will have a decently clean and brighter room.

good luck

@Allthegoodnamesarechosen Yeah I'm inclined to agree with you, we may just paint everything white to start with (I mean one of the rooms is red for crying out loud, no wonder it currently looks awful!) and reassess. But I am a bit of a perfectionist and I think long term the textured stuff will really bug me, especially on the ceiling. So rather than paint should we bite the bullet and get rid ASAP. Hmm lots of stuff to think about I guess.

I think you will have plenty to do when you move in, without stripping wallpaper! If you give it a quick coat, you will be able to work out exactly what you want to do eventually, and do it thoroughly.

that’s what I said when I moved into a bungalow ornamented with textured wallpaper in every room. I did take it off one wall, that why I decided to paint over the top in all the others except the kitchen! We lived there for 15 years, I repainted two of the rooms twice. Still looked pretty good.

Take it off and repair the walls!
Then paint with trade white and do nothing else for the immediate future.
Wallpaper like that never looks good painted.

In the short term I'd just paint everything a neutral colour- you'll have plenty to be getting on with once you first move in, particularly if you're not experienced DIYers. Paint it with a flat, matt paint in a pale, neutral colour- something like Dulux Timeless bought in bulk from a Dulux trade centre would do the job (if you paint it with anything with the slightest hint of a sheen it'll draw more attention to it). Then live with it for a while, and when you're ready tackle it room by room, starting with the smallest to build your confidence and experience. I think you're right to assume the walls and ceilings underneath might not be in a great condition- its often the reason people put up textured wallpaper in the first place!
Long term, there's plenty you can do to make the ceilings feel higher. If the walls have coving then replacing it with something fairly slimline can help. Then paint the skirting, walls, coving, and ceiling either the same colour, or shades of the same colour, with your lightest colour on the ceiling. It'll help optically blur the boundaries of where the walls finish and the ceilings start. I often paint walls one colour, mix the paint 70/30 with white to paint the coving, and then mix the paint 50/50 with white to paint the ceilings. If you can replace any central ceiling pendants with either flush light fittings, angled recessed spotlights or wall fitted uplighters that will help too (in all likelihood you'll be making the ceilings and walls good once you've removed all the textured wallpaper anyway).

Hang any curtains or blinds as close to the ceiling as you can, and if you go for curtains go for full length ones. I know it sounds odd, but its similar to the fashion advice that you should wear vertical rather than horizontal stripes if you're short- its an optical illusion that helps elongate the space. Finally, Pinterest is your friend! If you search something like 'decorating rooms with low ceilings' you'll got lots of advice and inspiration pop up. Good luck, and congratulations on your new home!

Textured wall paper attracts dust so you need to hoover your walls as well as the floors - just horrible. My last house had it. My advice would be to peel the top layer of the wall paper off with a scraper, then spray the remainder with water. I didn't use a steamer because it made it smell, just spray, wait and then scrape the under layer off when it is soft. It isn't a skilled job. Do a couple of hours, one room at a time, and then close the door and take a break. Don't expect it to be fast.

My three bed house took me six weeks but cost nothing to strip.

I use Absolute White in the Dulux 'Light and Space' range for ceilings. Matt, except for in kitchens/bathrooms. It reflects more light, and feels loftier.
If it's a forever house, I'd do what I'm doing here. Living with the horrible decor in the medium term and and doing each room right back to plaster one by one. If you're doing that but feel you really must slosh paint on the worst of the wallpaper elsewhere, make sure it's just cheap matt emulsion, not silk, satin or any other surface- those other surfaces will just make it even more hell to get the paper off when you do.
Ceilings- well, depends on what they are. If they are plasterboard, I'm stripping. If lath and plaster, I'm leaving them well alone (often with old lath ceilings the wallpaper is the ony thing holding them up) and living with the textured wallpaper. In those rooms, I use a deep sheepskin roller on the ceilings and the matt paint I mention above- and trade paint as it's thicker- this tends to minimise the effect of the paper texturing- the ripples from the roller fight it out with the texturing on the wallpaper and you get a surface that isn't smooth, but is a bit less sharply textured.

Oh god. Hoovering walls sounds like my ultimate nightmare.

ALSO. The skirtings and doors are all painted in a high gloss. Whyyyyyy

Be super careful pulling off the ceiling wallpaper! We did that in our new house thinking it would be super easy to plaster over and paint but instead found wallpaper stuck directly to plasterboard. it’s incredibly awkward to remove and even more difficult to remove without damaging the plasterboard underneath. Plasterer who have come to quote have said to scrape it off very gently to keep the plasterboard or overboard (which would drop already low ceilings).

had I know I would have just kept the paper. But silly me when and tore down all of a bit of all of the ceilings!

As someone who in their last house spent weeks and weeks removing wood chip wall paper from a house of two 40 a days smokers I can tell you it's a horrible job but my goodness so worth it when it's done. I'd worry about the ceilings though as you don't know what it might be hiding and then it costs about £500 a room to reskin if you need to m (the house we're in now had artex ceilings and we've just removed the last one getting on 1 and 3/4 years after moving in.

Our current house also has low ceilings 2.4m and removing the coving as we reskimmed each ceiling has made all the difference to how high they feel.

We've just bought a place that is ALL Artex. Every wall, every ceiling! We decided to just paint over it for now, and to have it removed from each room as we decide to redecorate over time. You don't know what might be behind the textured wallpaper and if you start removing it all you might just fall down a rabbit hole of redoing plaster etc - I'd paint over it to make the house liveable and deal with it bit by bit later.

Blimey. I am surprised anyone would consider keeping it, or indeed making the eventual removal harder.

We are in the same position as you but 6 months on, and just removing it as we go. Wallpaper stripper and on you go. It isn't an expensive hobby particularly, and if you are buying paint then you want to use it on a wall you want in the longer term

we have now had 3 houses with that bloody wallpaper. Our current house, was like yours, entirely COVERED in the stuff. Awful!

My opinion is this:

the likelihood is, is that your house will likely need a rewire (unlikely that your electrics will be of an adequate standard to survive the next 20-30 years), and you won’t have enough sockets etc in each room for modern standards…

soooo… get a rewire and plasterboard your walls to cover that bloody wallpaper. Two birds with one stone. Sort of!