Types of Wallcovering

Types of Wallcoverings:

Almost all wallcoverings that are used in homes today fall into these five categories and any or all of these may come in pre-pasted form:

o Fabric Backed Vinyl
o Paperbacked Vinyl
o Vinyl Coated Paper
o Plain Paper
o Non Wovens

When shopping for wallcovering, you will be way ahead of the game if you are familiar with these material types and how they can best be used to your advantage. Choosing the right type of material for your home will insure that the wallcovering will look great for years to come.

Fabric Backed Vinyl gets an A+ for durability, scrubbability, and its ability to hide the surface imperfections that walls in older homes show. The walls in kitchens, baths, and hallways take the most beating in a home—food and grease, steam from showers, and banging from suitcases or vacuum cleaners can quickly take their toll if the material chosen is not up to rugged standards. Choosing a fabric-backed vinyl is your best assurance that the installation will look great in 10, 15, even 20 years in areas that get wear and tear. When the time comes to remove this material, fabric-backed vinyl is the easiest to remove from a properly primed wall. Walls in older homes can have many problems that range from stress cracks and leaky areas, to multiple paint layers of questionable quality. Fabric-backed does the best job of handling these problems because it is flexible and it takes little effort to remove one strip for a quick repair. If fabric-backed vinyl is so wonderful how come it isn’t used all the time? Mainly because it’s harder to get delicate prints on this material, although manufacturers are getting better all the time at making really fashionable looks in fabric-backed. Removability Index* 8 to 10-- Material is pulled from the wall in one piece, no water is required.

Paper Backed Vinyl is suitable for most areas in the home. It is scrubbable and will handle general "wear and tear" almost as well as fabric-backed vinyl. The only area that may be questionable is in a frequently used shower area without an exhaust fan. Seams there may have a tendency to show in a year or two in this kind of bathroom. In excessively moist rooms the paper backing wicks up water at the seam degrading the paste bond to the wall or in some cases the paper and vinyl sheet can separate from each other in a process known as delamination. If you want your new wallpaper to look great for many years, use paper-backed vinyl in baths which are used less frequently and have a good exhaust fan to remove shower steam or in baths that are just so large that steam never builds up in them. Removability Index 4 to 7-- Vinyl top-sheet must be pulled off and the backing must be soaked and scraped.

Vinyl Coated Paper is exactly that—a paper that is coated in some way with a vinyl mist. Manufacturers tend to print intricate multi-hued florals and deep colored backgrounds on this type of paper. This material type differs in construction from the other two types in that there is no sheet of vinyl laminated to a backing. Without a backing, this type of wallcovering doesn’t do as good a job of covering up the wall’s inherent surface imperfections. If walls are rough, blankstock paper lining can be used to correct the problem. In darker




patterns—forest green, navy or cranberry, for example— the vinyl-coated type often has an annoying tendency to burnish or become shiny in spots where you wipe with a damp rag or where kids love to drag their hands when they go up and down a stairway. You will notice that many juvenile papers are vinyl coated, since manufacturers assume you will change the paper within a few years. Do yourself a favor and don’t even consider this type of material for areas that get traffic or are exposed to water or grease. Removability 5 to 8-- Usually these types must be soaked but you can get lucky sometimes and pull the sheets dry. The less vinyl coating the material has the better the removal.

Plain Paper....or what many people in the trade call "Paper Papers." These are mostly British imports nowadays. They are matte in finish and there is no vinyl at all to them. They have no protection against staining. Most of them require a blankstock paper liner to prevent paste staining. There’s no doubt that these papers are beautiful...just know in advance that they are delicate. Grasscloth and String Papers also would fall into this category by default since they also contain no vinyl. Removability 8 to 9 -- These must be soaked and scraped, but usually they accept removal spray quickly.

Non Wovens (NWs) are newer offerings by the industry which are produced to get the look of plain paper without the disadvantages of plain paper. The number one selling point to them is that they are strippable in the same way that Fabric Backed Vinyls are strippable....you pull on both of these types to remove them and you should have the room stripped before coffee break. Everybody loves a strippable wallcovering. NWs are also being sold as "mildew resistant" since they breathe extremely well. This mildew resistance remains to be seen. We'll just have to wait a few years to see how the NWs handle shower moisture. Just be aware that there are two varieties of non wovens―Unsealed Nonwoven (not a vinyl sheet and very porous) and Solid Vinyl Non Woven (a non woven sheet with a watertight vinyl coating on the surface). For Baths and Kitchens I strongly recommend that you use Solid Vinyl Non Wovens. (For a graphic demonstration of why I make this recommendation visit www.parodipalace.com Homepage>Types of Wallcoverings. Click on the blue underlined text in the “Non Wovens” section of that page for photos of NWs subjected to moisture and grease.)

Shopping for wallpaper or wallcoverings---for our purposes the terms are interchangeable---can be work. Most times the books are not arranged by material type and you may have to be a sleuth to find out what you are actually buying. Ignore all labels on rolls that say “scrubbable” or “strippable” since they can be cruel jokes designed to dupe the unsuspecting. If you are searching for a fabric-backed material and the wallpaper store you are shopping at doesn’t arrange their books by material type, start by asking for the “Textures” section of the store. Almost all the Fabric-backed materials these days are hiding in the “Textures” section.

Don’t expect the paper-backed vinyls to jump out at you either. Pattern books can say “solid vinyl”, “solid sheet vinyl”, or even “luxury vinyl” instead of making it easy for you by saying “paper-backed vinyl.”
The vinyl-coated type usually just says “vinyl wallcovering.” Sometimes they don’t say anything and you must rely on the abilities of the salesperson to steer you straight. If you don’t have a knowledgeable salesperson at hand and you want to know if the material you have chosen will be suitable for a busy bath or well used kitchen perfrom the following test on the material:

The Acid Test for Wallcovering Durability Anyone Can Do For Themselves Place a medium damp sponge on the pattern side and let it sit there for 15-30 minutes. Then turn the paper over and look at the backside. If there is any indication of warping, dampness, or darkness on the other side, the material is not a sheet vinyl and I would not recommend it for a bath or kitchen. Next hold it up to a light after soaking. Does it become more translucent in any areas? If this is the case then it's really not suitable for a kitchen or bath.


* A Removability Index is provided for each material type with 10 being the easiest and zero the worse. These ratings are based on removability from a properly primed wall and are very general depending on each existing installation. These are my own subjective ratings and they factor in whether or not one needs to set up for wet stripping or dry stripping, protect carpet from water, etc.