Choosing Paint and Wallpaper

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Choosing wallpaper is hard, but choosing a paint color is even harder! I knew I wanted to go with a green wallpaper, so I ordered some samples from Milton and King and put a pole up on Instagram. I was originally set on #1 (top left in the photo above) but once the samples came in I was really loving #2 (bottom left) because it was closer to the inspo pics I loved on Pinterest. I wanted to get the wallpaper picked before the paint color because I felt it would be easier that way. So I went with #2. I was going for a vintage vibe in this room.

I chose to skim coat the upper parts of the walls in preparation for the wallpaper since my walls are orange peel textured and I didn’t want to risk the texture showing through the wallpaper or the wallpaper not sticking to it well. I just rubbed joint compound over the texture with a large drywall trowel as smooth as I could and went back and sanded any ridges I could feel. I did make sure I had a mask on for this because it’s super messy!

I wanted to prime the room before choosing the paint color so I had a blank canvas. I prepped the room for the paint sprayer with plastic on the floor, a paint on film called Mask&Peel over the window and covered all the outlets. I tucked the plastic under the board and batten with a spatula to make sure I didn’t get any on the carpet.

I put on a paint suit, booties, goggles and a respirator to protect myself from the paint and the fumes and got to work spray priming the room with my Wagner paint sprayer. I even put a ziplock bag over my phone so I could record a timelapse without getting paint all over my phone.

Once the priming was done it was time to get some paint samples. I picked up 4 from Home Depot and put a samples of each one on each wall because paint can look different on different walls with the way the lighting comes through the window. It can also look different in every room throughout your house!

I took pictures and studied the colors with the wallpaper sample I had. I was choosing between Green Labyrinth by SW, Night Mission by Behr, Shade-Grown by SW and Vineyard & Vine by SW.

The Green Labyrinth looked too bright green for what I was looking for in this room. I was after a more earthy and vintage tone. But I did like the contrast with the wallpaper.

I really liked the Night Mission, but I think it was too close to the wallpaper color, but there was still a good amount of contrast.

I really loved the Shade-Grown, it has the contrast I was looking for and also a somewhat earthy tone, but was it earthy enough for the look I wanted?

I was also really loving Vineyard & Vine a lot! It had a lot of brown undertone to it and also a good amount of contrast.

To be honest I was really going back and forth between Shade-Grown and Vineyard & Vine. Green Labyrinth was out for me, but Night Mission would creep back into my thoughts sometimes too. Here they all are together, honestly it’s hard to get colors to come through accurately through a photo on peoples screens.

I chose a color and went and picked it up, but I kept it a secret till the reveal so I did all my Instagram stories in black and white or put filters on them so my audience couldn’t tell. It was fun to be sneaky!

I sprayed the room with my new Greco paint sprayer and I loved it! I also set up a filtration system I’ve seen Philip do on Instagram that is supposed to help take the paint out of the air. I think it worked pretty well! It’s just 4 AC filters and a box fan that you don’t mind getting paint on!

I ran out of paint before I got the ceiling done so I rolled that on later. I was more focused on the board and batten with the paint sprayer because I wanted it to look perfect without any brush marks.

I did get paint on the outside of the door from having to go in and out to refill my paint sprayer. If I did it again I would have got this paint sprayer instead since it does better with bigger rooms and is lighter. But I won’t be spraying huge rooms often either.

For some reason a couple of the samples I put up made the paint run! But not all of the colors, one was really bad, one was just a little runny and the others were fine. Strange because it was all the same type of sample, the only thing different was the color. Maybe it would have helped if I primed over them first.

I just sanded the drips down and went over the area with a brush and it turned out fine.

Next it was time for the wallpaper. This is the first time I’ve used wallpaper that wasn’t peel and stick, and I’ve only done drawers and small areas before. This wallpaper was great because you could just put the paste directly on the wall and put your wallpaper up, no need to let the paste sit on the wallpaper for a few minutes before putting it up. First I cut off the top of the wallpaper that had the wording on it and marked lines where it began and ended so that way when I put the glue up it covered the whole area the strip of wallpaper would lay on and I didn’t miss any.

It was tough going around the door trim, looking back I probably should have put the wallpaper up and then put the door trim over it to make for a smoother look. But this turned out fine even though it was very frustrating.

Once I got all the wallpaper up I noticed that the seams weren’t laying completely flat. I took a razor to lift them up a little, a tiny paint brush to rub the paste behind it and then used a wallpaper roller to roll the seams flat and it worked really well! What I should have done but didn’t was paint the wall behind the wallpaper green too so that way if the seams weren’t perfect you didn’t see white showing from behind the wallpaper, but I got most the seams pretty tight so it ended up being fine.

You see the difference below? The roller worked really well!

You’ll see below that when I started a new roll I just used the parts with the writing instead of cutting it off so I didn’t waste any wallpaper since you have to match the patterns up on each piece. This was okay in this situation because I was going to be adding crown moulding so the tops didn’t have to be perfect.

Have you guessed the color I chase yet?

The winner is…

…Shade-Grown by SW!!!

Here’s a quick video on the wallpaper process.

Is this the color you would have chosen? Personally, I LOVE it! But one day I’d also like to use Vineyard & Vine somewhere in the house. I really love the brown undertones it has!