How to hang wallpaper: how many rolls to buy, the steps, and what it costs

Which type of wallpaper is easiest to hang?

Peel and stick, on a smooth wall whose paint has cured at least 4 weeks. Prepasted comes next, and unpasted paper gives the most control for the most work.

Traditional (unpasted) paper comes dry and you roll paste on the back. It gives the widest choice of patterns and materials and the most control, because the paste lets the strip slide into place. Prepasted paper has the adhesive already on the back; you wet it (York's instruction is 30 seconds in warm water, or a spray bottle) and let it rest 3 minutes. Peel and stick has a pressure-sensitive adhesive under a backing sheet, needs no water or paste, and comes off the wall later by pulling.

Peel and stick has limits its maker spells out: it will not stick to textured walls, a newly painted wall has to cure at least 4 weeks first, and York warns that bathrooms and kitchens are more prone to bubbling and seam separation. For a bedroom wall that was painted last year, it is the easiest to hang and to take down. For a hallway that gets bumped, or anything humid, hang a traditional or prepasted vinyl.

How many rolls of wallpaper do you need?

Count strips, not square feet: this 12 by 14 bedroom needs 28 full-height strips, which is 10 double rolls of 33 ft paper or 15 rolls of 20 ft peel and stick.

Wallpaper is bought by the roll and hung by the strip, and the strip is where the math goes wrong. Every strip is the wall height plus 4 inches for trimming (York says about 2 inches at the ceiling and 2 at the baseboard), rounded up to a whole number of pattern repeats so the next strip cut from the same roll starts at the same point of the pattern.

For this room: 96 + 4 = 100 inches. With a 20.5 inch repeat, 100 ÷ 20.5 = 4.88, so each strip uses 5 repeats, 102.5 inches. A 33 ft roll is 396 inches, which is 3 strips (307.5 inches) and an 88.5 inch leftover. With the 20.8 inch repeat, strips are 104 inches and a roll still gives 3. A 20 ft peel and stick roll, 240 inches, gives only 2 strips and a 35 inch leftover.

Then count strips per wall, using the full-height width that is left after the openings:

The short pieces over the door (16 inches plus trim) and above and below the windows (12 and 36 inches plus trim) come out of the leftovers. On 33 ft rolls, 28 strips at 3 per roll is 9.3, so 10 double rolls, and the leftovers cover every short piece. On 20 ft peel and stick rolls, 28 strips at 2 per roll is 14 rolls; the 35 inch leftovers take the six short pieces over the door and windows, but the four 41 inch pieces under the windows need one more roll, so 15 rolls.

Compare that with the shortcuts. York's chart lists 7 bolts for a 12 by 14 room with 8 ft ceilings. ROMAN's rule of 18 usable square feet per single roll for repeats over 12 inches gives 372 ÷ 18 = 20.7 single rolls, or 11 double rolls. The chart is an area estimate; it does not know your repeat or your wall widths. Hang from the 7-roll order and you run out around strip 21, with 7 strips still to go.

Buy every roll from the same run or lot number. Both York's calculator and its instructions say it, because two runs of the same paper can differ in shade. That is also the argument for ordering one spare with the rest.

Tools and supplies you need to hang wallpaper

A 48 in level, a smoothing tool, a snap knife with spare blades and a trim guide for every type; a seam roller and wallcovering primer for pasted paper; adhesive and a paste roller for unpasted.

The primer quantity runs through the paint calculator's math: 372 sq ft, one coat, at 400 sq ft per gallon (the low end of ROMAN's 400 to 450) is 0.93 gallon, so one gallon. Unpasted paper needs adhesive: 28 strips of 104 by 20.5 inches plus the short pieces is about 456 sq ft of paper back, and at ROMAN PRO-880's 330 sq ft per gallon that is 1.38 gallons. Two gallons at $32.99 beat one gallon plus two 32 oz tubs at $72.97.

York ships wallpaper at a flat $9.99 to $29.99 depending on weight. Also needed and probably already owned: a tape measure, a pencil, a stepladder, a bucket or water tray for prepasted paper, a clean sponge and a screwdriver for outlet covers. Optional for prepasted paper: ROMAN's PRO-505 prepasted activator, $32.99 a gallon, in place of plain water. Luxury: a pasting table, which saves your back on unpasted paper but is not required for prepasted or peel and stick.

How to hang wallpaper, step by step

1. Prepare the wall. Remove nails, fill holes, sand patches smooth, and wash off grease and dust. If the house was built before 1978 and you are sanding or scraping old paint, test for lead first; EPA's RRP rule binds anyone you pay to do it. Check: a hand run over the wall finds no bumps, and the wall is dry.
2. Prime with a wallcovering primer and let it dry: ROMAN gives 3 hours minimum and 12 as optimum for PRO-977. For peel and stick over paint, skip this, but the paint must have cured at least 4 weeks. Check: the primer is dry to the touch and uniform in color, with no bare patches.
3. Turn off the power to the room at the breaker and remove outlet covers and switch plates. Check: a lamp plugged into each outlet stays dark.
4. Draw the plumb line for the first strip, starting in the least visible corner, because the last strip will not match the first. Measure out 20 inches from the corner (the 20.5 inch paper width minus 1/2 inch that wraps into the corner) and draw a vertical line with the level. Check: the level's bubble is centered along the full height of the line.
5. Cut the strips. Each is 102.5 inches for a 20.5 inch repeat on an 8 ft wall, cut at the same point in the pattern. Write "top" and a number on the back of each. Check: lay two strips side by side on the floor and the pattern matches across the edge.
6. Activate or paste. Prepasted: 30 seconds in warm water or an even spray, then fold and wait 3 minutes (York). Unpasted: a thin coat of adhesive with the 3/8 inch roller, center to edges, then book it, ends folded to the middle without creasing, for 3 to 5 minutes (ROMAN). Peel and stick: peel back 12 to 24 inches of backing only. Check: the paper has relaxed and lies flat, with no dry spots along the edges.
7. Hang the first strip with its edge on the plumb line and about 2 inches running onto the ceiling. Smooth from the center out with the plastic smoother, working down the strip. Check: the edge sits on the line top to bottom, and no bubbles are left under the paper.
8. Trim at the ceiling and baseboard with the trim tool as a straight edge and a fresh blade. Snap off the blade section often; a dull blade tears wet paper. Check: the cut edge is clean and sits tight to the ceiling and the top of the baseboard.
9. Hang the next strips edge to edge, matching the pattern and butting the seams. Roll the seams lightly with the seam roller and wipe paste off the face, the ceiling and the baseboard with a damp sponge. York says to stop after three panels and check that the color is uniform. Check: seams are vertical, tight, and free of air and paste bubbles.
10. At outlets and switches, hang the strip over the box, cut an X from the center of the opening to its corners, and trim the flaps to the edge of the box. Check: the paper lies flat around the box and the cover plate will hide the cut edge.
11. At inside corners, wrap about 1/2 inch around, then start the next wall with a new plumb line rather than trusting the corner, which is rarely straight. Check: the level confirms the new line before the first strip on the new wall goes up.
12. After the paper is dry, put the covers back and turn the power on. Check: every outlet works and every plate sits flat on the paper.

How do you remove wallpaper later?

Peel and stick and paper hung with a strippable adhesive over primer pull off in strips; paper on aggressive adhesive needs scoring, a remover and a scraper. Plan the removal when you hang, because that is when you decide how hard it will be. ROMAN sells PRO-977 on the promise of strippability, and says its PRO-880 adhesive is strippable with fabric-backed vinyl over bare drywall once dry. Non-woven paper hung that way comes off in strips. Peel and stick comes off by pulling from the top corners slowly downward, parallel to the wall, per York. Paper hung with aggressive adhesive, or over unprimed drywall, needs a scoring tool ($11.99), a remover ($29.99 a gallon for PRO-496) and a scraper ($12.99), and even then it can take the drywall's face paper with it. In a pre-1978 house, scraping can also disturb old paint under the paper.

Mistakes that cost money

Ordering from the chart. Seven rolls leave this room 3 rolls short. The reorder is $360 in prepasted paper, up to $29.99 in shipping, 7 to 10 business days with a half-papered room, and a real chance the new rolls come from a different run. If the shade differs, a whole wall gets rehung.

Cutting strips without the repeat. A strip cut at 100 inches instead of 102.5 does not line up with the next one. Each wasted strip is a third of a roll: $40 in prepasted, $63.33 in unpasted.

Hanging peel and stick on fresh paint. York asks for 4 weeks of cure. Hung sooner, the paper lifts or peels the paint when you reposition it, and the $65 rolls do not go back on the wall. The whole room is $975 of paper.

Skipping the wallcovering primer on bare drywall. The primer is $59.99. Without it, removal can tear the drywall's face paper, and the repair is skim-coating and priming the wall before anything else goes on it.

Leaving paste on the face of the paper, the ceiling or the baseboard. It dries shiny and can stain. Wipe as you go; replacing one stained strip costs $40 of prepasted paper plus the rematching.

How much does it cost to hang wallpaper?

For this bedroom, $1,039 to $2,126 if you hang it yourself, depending on the paper, or $1,856 to $3,917 installed at Homewyse's May 2026 range.

Paperhanging is a small trade. BLS counted 1,570 paperhangers in May 2025 against 225,190 painters, and in many places the person hanging your paper will be a painter who also does it. The paperhanger median wage was $25.07 an hour nationally ($30.19 in California, $28.96 in New York). Divided by 0.695, the wage share of compensation in private construction, a paperhanger costs an employer $36.07 an hour before overhead and profit.

Homewyse's May 2026 range for installed wallpaper is $4.99 to $10.53 per square foot, including basic prepasted vinyl paper, primer and supplies. On 372 sq ft that is $1,856 to $3,917.

The comparison leans against DIY, because the pro price includes basic paper and the DIY column uses a $120 designer roll. Even so, the low quote pays you about what a paperhanger costs an employer, and a high quote pays far more. Hire out when the paper is expensive enough that one ruined strip hurts, when the walls need skim-coating first, or when the room has a stairwell. Hang it yourself when the walls are smooth, the room is a simple box, and the paper is prepasted or peel and stick.

Painting the other walls or the trim? The guide on how to paint a room works through this same bedroom, the paint calculator gives the can mix, and the drywall calculator covers any wall repair before the paper goes up.