What tools do I need to hang wallpaper?

A pasting table, a paste brush, a smoothing brush and a seam roller; a sharp knife with spare blades, scissors and a straight edge; a plumb line or spirit level, a tape measure and a pencil; a bucket and sponge; and a filling knife and scraper for the preparation.

Do I need lining paper?

It is hung first on poor or patched walls, and under heavy or expensive papers. Whether you need it depends on the walls and the paper: the label often says. If you do, it is counted the same way as the paper.

Do I need to size the walls before wallpapering?

New or bare plaster, and very porous walls, are sealed with size or diluted paste so the paper slides into place and sticks. The paste's instructions say when walls need sizing and how.

How much wallpaper paste do I need?

The paper's label says which paste, or none: some papers are ready-pasted. The packet says how many rolls it hangs. For 7 rolls and a packet that hangs 8, a figure typed in as an example, that is one packet.

What you need to wallpaper a room: the full list

To wallpaper a room you need the rolls, the paste the paper’s label asks for, sugar soap, filler and abrasive paper to get the walls clean and flat, dust sheets, and the tools to cut, paste and hang: a pasting table, a paste brush, a smoothing brush, a seam roller, a sharp knife with spare blades, scissors, a straight edge, a plumb line or spirit level, a tape measure, a pencil, a filling knife and scraper, and a bucket and sponge. Lining paper and size are the two lines to check first. A 4 m × 3 m room with walls 2.4 m high takes 7 rolls of 53 cm × 10.05 m paper with no pattern to match, which is a generic example roll.

The checklist

These are the lines BuildBatch lists for papering a room whose walls are painted and sound, with the mark each one starts with. “Check first” means it may need buying, and something the list cannot know decides it.

Item	Starts as	Why it is on the list
Wallpaper, in whole rolls	Need	Counted in whole drops from each wall’s width, the height and the roll’s label
Wallpaper paste	Check first	Some papers are paste-the-wall, some are ready-pasted and need none
Lining paper	Check first	Hung first on poor or patched walls, and under heavy or expensive papers
Sizing the walls	Check first	New or bare plaster, and very porous walls, are sealed with size or diluted paste so the paper slides into place and sticks
Sugar soap or wall cleaner	Need	Paper sticks to a clean wall. One container does a room
Filler for cracks and holes	Check first	Small cracks and holes are filled and sanded flat first: paper shows every bump
Abrasive paper or sanding sponges	Need	For rubbing filler flat
Dust sheets	Need	To cover the floor
Filling knife and scraper	Need	For filling and for removing anything loose
Pasting table, paste brush, smoothing brush, seam roller	Need	To paste the drops and hang them flat, with neat seams
Sharp knife with spare blades, scissors, a straight edge	Need	A blunt blade tears wet paper: change it often
Plumb line or spirit level, tape measure, pencil	Need	The first drop on each wall is hung to a true vertical line, not to the corner
Bucket and sponge	Need	To wipe paste off the face of the paper and the skirting

What the label decides

The rolls. Four figures on the roll’s label decide the count: the width, the length, the pattern repeat and the match. BuildBatch starts with a roll 53 cm wide and 10.05 m long with a free match, labelled as a generic example, and the figures on your label replace it. The sum is in how many rolls of wallpaper do I need?
The paste. The label says how the paper is hung: paste the paper, paste the wall, or ready-pasted. The paste packet says how many rolls it hangs; divide the rolls by that and round up. Wallpaper paste: how many rolls does a packet hang? sets four makers’ figures side by side.
Buying the rolls together. Buy every roll with the same batch number on the label: colours differ between batches.

What the walls decide

Painted and sound. The list above. How much filler depends on the walls: a small tub is usual for a sound room.
New or bare plaster. Sizing the walls moves from Check first to Need. The paste’s instructions say how.
Flaking, powdery or glossy paint, or old wallpaper. A line is added, marked Check first: stripping old paper or loose paint. New paper goes on a sound, clean wall, so old paper and flaking paint come off first, with a scorer and a scraper, or a steam stripper for stubborn paper.
Poor or patched walls. Lining paper first. If you need it, it is counted the same way as the paper.

Older paint can contain lead, and textured coatings applied before 2000 can contain asbestos: do not sand or scrape a coating you are not sure about; get advice first.

Worked example

A bedroom 4 m × 3 m with walls 2.4 m high, one door and one window, walls painted and sound. No paper has been chosen, so the roll is the generic example, 53 cm × 10.05 m with a free match. It is not any product’s roll.

Wallpaper: walls of 4 m, 3 m, 4 m and 3 m take 8, 6, 8 and 6 drops, 28 in all, each 2.5 m long. Four drops come from each roll, so 7 rolls, with no spare drop. Need.
Wallpaper paste: for 7 rolls. Check first. Enter that a packet hangs 8 rolls, a figure typed in as an example, and it becomes 1 packet.
Lining paper: 31.01 m² of wall, if it is needed. Check first.
Sizing the walls and filler: Check first.
Sugar soap or wall cleaner: 31.01 m² to wash down. Need.
Dust sheets: 12 m² of floor to cover. Need.
Abrasive paper, and the tools in the last five rows of the checklist: Need.

That is nine lines to buy and four to check first.

The door and the window are not taken off the rolls. The short drops above and below them come from the same rolls, and every corner wastes a strip, so whole drops are counted for every wall.

Seven rolls with no spare drop is tight: one mis-cut leaves you a roll short, and one more roll with the same batch number is easier to buy now than a match later. The list says so on the line.

A pattern changes the count. The same room in a paper with a 53 cm straight-match repeat has drops of 2.65 m, only three to a roll, so it takes 10 rolls, with 2 spare drops.

The whole list for this room, with the working behind each quantity, is in the worked example for wallpapering a 3 × 4 m bedroom.

Do it with BuildBatch

Open the wallpaper calculator, type the room and copy the width, length, repeat and match from the roll’s label. You get the rolls and every other line above, each marked Need or Check first, with the reason it is there. Enter how many rolls a packet of your paste hangs and the paste is counted too.

What this guide does not cover

How to hang the paper, which its label and the paste’s instructions give. Which paste a paper needs. Papering a ceiling. Stairwells, which need proper access equipment. Removing a textured coating. Diagnosing damp.