Bedroom Grasscloth Wallpaper Installation – It’s Not Going Great, But It’s Not Going Terribly

So with that said, I jumped right in two days ago an installed that first piece, which I already showed you.

I was off to a good start and feeling pretty confident. This wall required five pieces, and I had cut all five pieces from the same roll and numbered them so that I could put them on the wall in order. So yesterday, I worked from that piece in the middle (piece #3), and worked towards the left corner, first installing piece #2, and then piece #1. And then I stood back and looked, and that center piece was very obviously darker than the other two.

But that couldn’t be it because I installed piece #3 in the middle of the wall going up, piece #2 going down, and piece #1 going up. Pieces #1 and #2 looked fine next to each other. But that middle piece was definitely darker.

So when I was ready to work the opposite direction, I had to make a choice. Do I stick with the same process of flipping every other piece (called reverse hanging)? Or should I install them all going the same direction? I was still unsure about the possibility of the grasscloth having a nap to it, and if that’s what was causing that middle piece to look darker. So I tried tacking the next piece (piece #4) to the wall going both directions to see if I could detect a difference.

And no, I couldn’t. I ended up installing that piece going the same direction as the center piece, and even with them going the same direction, that center piece still looks darker.

I went ahead and finished that wall and reinstalled the top trim above the windows. But it is a complete mystery to me why that center piece of grasscloth looks darker than the rest. Is it just because of the placement of the lights on the ceiling? Or is that piece that came out of the middle of that roll of grasscloth wallpaper truly dyed darker than the rest? That doesn’t make any sense to me.

So now, I don’t know what to do going forward. Should I continue to reverse hang the rest of the wallpaper? Because the reverse hanging is clearly not what’s causing that one piece to look darker since pieces #3, #4, and #5 are all hung the same direction, but it’s only #3 that looks darker. So it’s 100% NOT a nap issue.

Or should I just hang all of the rest of the pieces going the same direction? Ugh. I genuinely don’t know what to do here.

I’m not going to freak out about it. I’m going to move forward and get this done. And if I happen to have one piece of wallpaper left over when it’s all done, I might come back and redo this middle piece. But it just makes no sense to me why this piece appears darker in the first place. I really think it might be a lighting issue, in which case, I’ll be wasting my time replacing it since a new piece of wallpaper won’t change the lighting in the room.

But you can see that these pieces look just fine next to each other, even though they’re hanging in the opposite direction.

And these pieces look fine next to each other even though they’re hanging in the same direction.

The good news is that a lot of this wall will be covered anyway. So even if I have to live with this one piece appearing darker than the others, I think it’ll be fine. I marked the height of the headboard with a piece of tape, which you can see here.

And then I can use some artwork above the headboard, like a series of three framed pictures, that can disguise a lot of those seams in those three pieces. It won’t cover all of the seams, obviously, but it’ll take some of the focus off of the seams and put the focus on the headboard and artwork.

So overall, I’m not feeling discouraged or defeated. The actual process of installing the wallpaper has gone very well. I went back to using the Roman Pro-555 Extreme Tack since that’s what I’m used to, and I think it’s so much easier. The extreme tack holds that heavy grasscloth in place so much better than the other one I tried. And it really holds down the seams very well.

I also stuck with the “paste the wall” method. I’m just being super careful when applying the adhesive right next to the previously installed grasscloth. I’m using a 2-inch Purdy sash brush (an angled paint brush) to very carefully apply the adhesive at the seam, and so far, I haven’t had any issues with the adhesive squishing out through the seam and getting onto the face of the grasscloth.