The decorater just told me that

[festiveface]

most people these days have painted rather than papered walls and that he often just puts up a lining paper and paints over it.

do you have this in your house and do you live in a new or old house?

thanx for any advice

We have done this when the walls are not good enough quality to just paint over. Lining paper leaves a smooth surface to paint. Our current house has mainly wallpapered rooms, but that is due to the previous owners and our lack of funds to change it!

Live in early 70,s house with plasterboard
The only places that arent papered are front room and hall/stairs and landing

I smoothed over walls will sandpaper after filling tiny holes etc
and painted straight over
looks good

just painted or lining paper with paint on here. We live in a victorian house.

We did this is our old house but only because it was too expensive to plaster over the rough walls and then paint them iyswim.

We don't have any wallpaper in our house, its all got lining paper on then painted over.

We've got half and half (1980's house) but would tend to agree with him. The walls were surprisingly sound when stripped bare and had not been painetd before in some places so must have been wallpapered from new.

My house is 1930s and has a lot of lath and plaster, which is pretty rough so we have to use proper paper. When we moved in most of the walls (and the ceilings) were covered in textured paper, which was then painted. We stripped some and tried lining paper instead but it didn't cover up the crapness of the walls so we put the textured paper back.

Victorian house with lining paper painted over here! We ripped off the hideous wallpaper, though, if I'm honest, there is still some woodchip painted white at the top of the house. It's a bu**er to get off, so I expect it'll be there for a while.

We live in a 1960's maisonette, which has wallpapered walls which we are currently stripping to prepare for redecoration in order to sell. The walls do have cracks and there are many uneven and rough places They have also been previously painted, what with I know not, but it's half peeled off and really grotty.

However, even if the walls were perfect, we would still paper them. We have chosen a lightly textured paper with a subtle colour to it, but no pattern. It can be painted over if it doesn't suit the next owners. I don't mind lined and painted walls, but I personally prefer textured wallpaper, as it looks cosy and gives a more professional finish if you have crap walls.

I find that bare painted walls look strange and cold and remind me of schools and hospitals (sorry, just my own opinion).

Definitely prefer paint over paper.
There are an infinite number of paint colours to choose from but only a limited wallpaper selection - I can never find a wallpaper I like that doesn't turn out to be hand-blocked by Bolivian artisans at £300 a roll, so paint it is.
But flat matt in lovely colours so not schooly or hospitally - and there was no need to make our house look cosy - on the contrary we were tryng to make it as spacious as possible...

Also much easier to paint over when you fancy a change. The walls in our house were 1960s and in pretty good nick, so we filled, sanded, sugarsoaped and painted straight over, but would have used lining paper if they'd been in worse condition.

Lining paper then painted on most of the walls. Lounge and bedroom have one wall papered (large but subtle floral) and rest painted.... mmmmm

Our present house had mainly woodchip and wood panelling downstairs. we spent most of last summer ripping it all off, then having it all re plastered. Now it is painted, and looks much less fussy.

Our last house was a new one, and it was all plastered and painted.

Personally I prefer painted, with maybe a feature of wallpaper somewhere. Much easier to change as well.

Yes definitely agree with your decorator! Both houses we have bought, wallpaper is the first thing to come down. I don't use lining paper (feel like its a waste of effort, and you can always see the joins) just sand and fill any cracks on the wall before painting.

BUT wallpaper is becoming fashionable again. I have considered putting a funky patterned wallpaper on just one wall.

We have paint on plaster in most of the house, although upstairs has some lining paper.
We quite like wallpaper now and have 2 walls in the kitchen and 1 wall in the bathroom done in a pretty yellow Cath Kidston. I'm going to get one wall in our bedroom done in a Laura Ashley paper I've seen and I'm considering splashing out on one roll of Jane Churchill paper to do some of dd's bedroom.
The annoying thing about wallpaper is it's the only diy job we can't do ourselves. We'd sooner pay to get a decorator to come in and do it.

i think wallpaper is naff

I think most wallpaper is naff.

But not mine.

We have an old house which had patterned wall paper when we moved in. We just painted over it to brighten up the place. Having just had the attic converted, the builder assures me that it's perfectly OK to paint straight onto the plaster. We'll have to redecorate some of the original areas and are just going to get lining paper put up and depending on cost we may put lining paper in attic also. I dislike wallpaper. My SIL just finished her big extension and house renovations, it looked great until the patterned wallpaper went up - made the place look smaller and somehow less appealing even though it was a light pattern. She admitted this herself and wished she hadn't bothered now

well, our house is pretty dark and poky and the wallpaper has brightened it up and made dark corners bigger.

MT - we don't have that. But we do have the modern equivalent - patterned wallpaper to the top and white painted wood cladding to the bottom.

I think wallpaper is mostly naff, but there is some gorgeous designer stuff around at the moment, like Neisha Crossland or Cath Kidston. It's v expensive (£25-30 a roll) so you could splash out and do one wall and leave the rest plain white or other neutral colour. I think that looks nice. We've just got plain painted walls in our flat (Victorian conversion), because we only ever planned to live here for 3 or 4 years and always keep future buyers in mind. But when we buy our next house I'm definitely going to splash on a bit of wallpaper for our bedroom at least.