The wall of your home or apartment has the power to transform the outlook and ambience of your home but you have to decide which works better for you between the option of wallpaper vs paint.
Would you prefer a living room and bedroom with great wallpapers or would you rather opt for a paint job that blends with your favourite colour? Before you make a decision between wallpaper vs paint, it is important to understand the pros and cons of both options. Such details will cover ease of application, cost, versatility and other factors which will be highlighted below. The essence of this is put you in a position where you are able to make more informed choices.
Pros of Using Wallpapers
Wallpaper refers to paper and other materials that are used in interior decoration to decorate the interior walls of your home. Below are some advantages of using wallpapers:
- Durable: Wallpapers are very durable and can withstand the unpredictability of children who can’t keep their hands off the wall. Remember that you don’t need to be a parent to have children in your home. Your little nephews and nieces come with the same level of energy
- Variety: Wallpapers offer you more variety in terms of designs, patterns, shades and textures that you can choose from. The cost of bespoke designs has been forced down by the advancement in digital printing. You also enjoy the advantage of working with stripes. For instance, vertical stripes can make your ceilings appear much higher than they really are while horizontal stripes can give the room a wider look.
- Long lifespan: Painting your walls is cheaper than having wallpapers. However, wallpapers have a longer life-span. With time, the cost eventually evens out. However, cheap wallpapers do not enjoy this advantage.
- Covers Wall Defects: If you have large parts of your wall defective or damaged, covering it with wallpapers is a cheaper option when compared to plastering and painting; especially if you’re doing it yourself.
- Effect: Wallpapers are better at adding depth, style and warmth to your walls in a way that monotone paints would struggle to replicate.
Cons of Using Wallpapers
Despite the advantages of having beautiful wallpapers plastered across your walls, using them comes with some downsides, which have been highlighted below:
- Cannot Withstand Moisture: Unlike paint, wallpapers do not handle moisture well. This makes a bad choice for bathrooms, kitchens and other high moisture rooms. When used in such rooms, wallpapers end up peeling and losing aesthetic value.
- Difficult to Remove: The task of removing wallpaper is tedious by default. To do it right, you need to have the right tools and you need to exercise patience. Chemicals can also be used to strip wallpapers but you need to be careful to avoid damaging the wall.
- Time-Consuming: Wallpapers are more time-consuming to apply compared to painting.
- Getting Stuck: Unlike wallpapers, you can’t paint over a wallpaper if you get bored with it earlier than you anticipated. If you really want to change it, then you have to be prepared to go through the trouble of taking it down first.
Pros of Using Paint
There are several advantages that you enjoy when you paint the interior walls of your home. Take a look at some of them.
- Inexpensive: The typical Paint is a very affordable option when you need to transform the outlook of your home. Painting a room is cheaper than having wallpapers
- Ease of Application: Paint is not complicated to apply to your home. Even in a case where you are painting over a damaged wall, you can apply primer paint in advance to applying paint over a darker colour. This shortens your preparation time and makes the process easier.
- Variety: You can actually paint your home yourself and you have a variety of paints to choose from. The basic rule to understand about paint is that the higher the sheen of the paint, the higher the shine. By extension, the higher the shine of the paint, the more durable the paint will be. There are also different types of paint – Flat paint has no shine while a high-gloss paint is all shine. In addition to these, we have the eggshell, semi-gloss and satin paint.
- Universally Applicable: You can apply paint to the walls of any room in your home. Unlike, wallpapers, you can apply them in high moisture rooms.
- Colour Scheme Advantage: If you are aiming for a particular colour scheme, it is easier to achieve this with paint that wallpapers. A growing number of paint companies have made this easier with ready-to-go colour schemes. These schemes cut down the risk involved in generating your own colour palette.
- Correcting Mistakes: A painting mistake can easily be painted over creatively. In the case of wallpapers, rectifying mistakes is tougher and requires more scrapping.
Cons of Using Paint
There are disadvantages of using paint that you should know about. They give you a solid idea of what to expect if you eventually decide to settle for it.
- Damage: The walls in your home can get scraped or hit. When this happens, it results in the chipping of the wall. To restore the uniformity of this part of the wall, you need to repair and repaint it.
- Limiting: Painting your walls does not give you a rich range of colour and design spectrums to choose from.
- Touch Up: Chipped paint calls for a touch up on the paint on your walls more frequently than you might be comfortable with.
- Messy Business: By default, painting creates quite a mess. You need to take extra caution to avoid staining your appliances, floors and furniture.
- Health Hazard: There are paints that release volatile organic compounds (VOCs) when you apply them. These compounds have been proven to be harmful to humans.
Final Thoughts on Wallpaper Vs Paint
Despite the pros and cons of wallpaper vs paint, you can enjoy the best of both worlds by exploring the option of paintable wallpapers. They go a long way in helping to cover up imperfections in walls and can help small rooms shed the cramped look.
Paintable wallpapers come in either rolls or adhesive squares. You should note that after you apply the wallpaper on your wall, you can either leave it as it is or you can decide to paint it.
Knowing the pros and cons of wallpaper vs paint offers you an opportunity to know what works for you and against you. Your decision, when faced with wallpaper vs paint, will be greatly influenced by your budget, the size and type of room you’re decorating as well as how frequently you redecorate.
