Wallpaper durability in bathrooms?

12 years ago

Hello all,

I've searched the forum and don't see this addressed directly so I'll ask: does anyone have experience with wallpaper in their bathroom? I want to use the paper in the link below, but it's expensive and I sure don't want it to peel off after a couple years. It will be going into our only bathroom, so showering and bathing will be going on. We are doing a complete reno on a little (1100 sq. ft.) house that we just bought this summer, so venting is wide open at this point. If you have good venting has your paper held up? Is there anything I can do to help it be more 'moisture resistant'? Any info or advice would be greatly appreciated!

Here is a link that might be useful: Woods wallpaper

Comments (5)

tikatoo
12 years ago
It's a lovely wallpaper! I don't imagine that it is vinyl? We had non-vinyl wallpaper in our fairly large bath (now going thru reno) and never had a problem - never used the vent either. I thought we would never get it off the walls! However in our powder room where we have a toilet and sink it started peeling a bit after 5 years - also non vinyl. I think a lot has to do with the application, the paper, and the usage. No guarantees! Peeling wall paper can be repaired - sort of. But it never works as well - I'm at our powder room all the time gluing down seams!
deedles
Original Author
12 years ago
No, it's a really heavy paper from Cole and Son (wallpaper supplier to the Queen! woohoo). I'd sure like to use it but like I said, $$. Thanks for your input!
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palimpsest
12 years ago
Wallpaper in my parents' bathrooms is 25 years old and still in good shape. Not vinyl, heavy paper.
deedles
Original Author
12 years ago
Great! I'm liking the feedback!
herring_maven
12 years ago
deedles, a lot depends on the underlying surface. In a steamy bathroom, some moisture will work its way between the wall surface and the back of the wallcovering, and different wallcovering materials will behave differently to that condition.

We repapered our master bathroom 21 years ago (autumn 1990) as a DIY project with a foil prepasted wallpaper. The walls had been papered before, and we removed the old wallpaper to expose the plaster underneath, which was a good surface to paper on. Over the years, we have had to flatten curling at the seams a couple of times (injecting additional paste and rolling), but after the seam flattening the overall result looks the same now as it did the day we installed it.

Last year, we papered the previously glossy oil-paint covered walls of our downstairs powder room, and we needed to do a lot of surface preparation to make sure that the "paper" (we used a Rasch -- German brand -- "nonwoven peelable fabric" [NOT vinyl] product that is very dimensionally stable) would adhere to the surface. I doubt that we would have ventured trying to adhere a prepasted vinyl or paper wallcovering to that surface, even after the preparation. So far -- after a year -- the not-vinyl, nonwoven peelable Rasch product is working very well.

It is hard to tell from the pictures on the page that you linked whether the Cole & Sons paper you are considering is true paper, vinyl, or nonwoven peelable; if you have a choice, by all means go with the nonwoven peelable. But even if it is available only as a prepasted paper or vinyl, our master bathroom experience suggests that you can get at least a couple of decades out of it.