Can I paint over wallpaper??

4 years ago

The room was wallpapered all walls and ceiling. It is old and looking worn. I want to paint ceiling white and rewallpaper the walls. The paper is a bear to remove.

Do I need to remove to paint ceiling?

Do I need to remove paper on walls or just paper over. The original paper is smooth and still well adheared in all areas.

Featured Answer

rwiegand

3 years ago

You can, but you (and future owners) will regret it until the end of time, or until someone does it right, cursing the painter throughout the entire process.

We had a house where walpaper was applied on unprimed drywall and then painted (what were they thinking??) and it turned out to be much quicker and easier to pull the drywall off and replace it with blueboard and plaster rather than stripping it.

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Comments (8)

Rho Dodendron
4 years ago
You CAN paint over wallpaper. You will be taking a chance that the paper will start to peel off in places at best or adhere to the walls and damage them at worst.
cat_ky
4 years ago
Yes, you can paint over wallpaper, but, you will always see the seams, and it wont look the best. Its also worse than a bear to remove, once you have paint on it. I would not wallpaper over the top of it either. Remove it now. Its well worth the time and effort.
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arcy_gw
4 years ago
last modified: 4 years ago
CAN you??? I suppose. SHOULD you NEVER EVER NEVER EVER. If you do you have removed any chance of anyone else taking the paper off. The entire room will have to be re-rocked. Having said that, we painted over paper in a basement. Removing it would have meant remuddling at the least, maybe re-rocking due to the moisture in basements and the likelihood of getting the paper off the wall w/o major damage to the dry wall. It's been 20+ years and no seams have popped. That wall paper is part of those walls. If you do not paint the ceilings when you paint/wall paper walls the ceiling will look dingy, so yes it really needs to be refreshed.
rrah
4 years ago
A bit of advice for you. If you ever plan to sell the house, do the job correctly and remove the wallpaper before painting. During my realtor years there was one seemingly smaller thing that consistently turned buyers off from a house: painted wallpaper. It's always obvious after a short time.
Jilly
3 years ago
I know it’s a pain, but remove it all. You’ll be very glad you did.

I speak from experience. Long, ugly story.
functionthenlook
3 years ago
I do prefer removal and it is a PIA, but sometimes you can't. I've painted over wallpaper with success at my camp. It really depends on the type of wallpaper and the glue used. Some wallpaper is really stuck on the walls and cause more damage to remove. The washable wallpapers are better to paint. The problem with some wallpaper is the moisture from the paint will release the glue and cause bubbles, then it will have to be removed. It's best to spot test.

Score the seams on each side and remove the wallpaper to widen the seam. Seal the seam with a light coat of a good primer. Then feather the seam with a coat or two of drywall mud and sand. Then paint the walls with two light coats of a good primer. (Not paint with primer). Light coats of primer are better. You don't want to saturate the paper with moisture. Then the wall is sealed and you can paint as normal.
elcieg
3 years ago
If that is the route you want to go, yes, you can paint over wallpaper. A tip, make sure seams are tight and sand them down a bit.