Renovating or redecorating your living space can be a lot of fun; it’s a chance to freshen things up in your home’s interior or put your own personal stamp on somebody else’s style. However, it’s not without its risks. 

Along the way to achieving the ideal aesthetics for your interior, you’ll find that there are plenty of decor regrets you’ll want to avoid. From the time-consuming to the costly, the learning curve when redecorating can be a steep one, so it pays to have your wits about you be aware of the mistakes you won’t want to make.

Of course, our I Love Wallpaper team are dab hands with DIY and redecorating, so to help you, we’ve put together some essential information on common mistakes and how to avoid decor regrets. 

Picking the Wrong Paint and Wallpaper

With so many patterns and colours of wallpaper available as well as different shades of paint, deciding on and picking the right hue for your room is no simple task. Making the wrong decision on either of these aspects of interior design are among the most common mistakes made, and if you haven’t done so yourself, you’ll most likely know somebody that has! Of course, we covered plenty of these in our Filtered Homes feature. 

A wealth of choice isn’t always a good thing, and it can wind up with you feeling overwhelmed, second-guessing and picking the wrong tones or prints for the room in question. What’s more, once on your walls, wallpaper or paint can look very different from how it does in the roll or tin. These misleading changes can occur through factors such as the size and shape of the room, as well as how both artificial and natural light affects it. 

To avoid making such mistakes, it’s integral that you fully consider the space at your disposal as well as your overall objective regarding how you want the room to look. Factor in corners and recesses in the room, as well as artificial light and whether you’re using warm or cool coloured lightbulbs. Perhaps most importantly though, you should make note of the natural light and where it falls at different times of the day. Make sure to take some time to sit in the room on the morning, afternoon and evening, recording where and how the light hits certain areas and the effect this has on the hues used.

Making use of wallpaper offcuts or test pots of paint before you commit to redecorating the whole room is always recommended, so position your paper or paint samples in different locations and see how the light and space affects them.

Investing in the Wrong Sized Furniture

Another common mistake made when redecorating a room is miscalculating those all-important furnishings. All too regularly you’ll see a room that squeezes in a huge, oversized corner sofa where it’s not meant to fit or cram in a ridiculously sized dining table that will rarely (if ever) get used. 

That said, this can work both ways, and so you’ll also want to avoid investing in furniture that rattles around in a more spacious interior space and looks completely lost. 

So, how to avoid this? Measure – then measure again! It’s wise that you become well-acquainted with your tape measure when considering furniture for your home, and as painstaking and dull as this process might seem, it’s definitely worth it. 

A well-proportioned room is important, therefore getting the scale of your furniture right is a massive step towards avoiding any decor regrets. When measuring, you should account for the likes of bay windows, radiators, recesses and space which any doors need to open within, as well as any gaps left between the furniture and your walls. Using masking tape or similar to effectively ‘chalk out’ the shape of your furniture on your floor space is a great way to gain an idea of how big things are, where they will sit, how much space they’ll take up and also how much room will be left for you to manoeuvre in. 

Remember the Layout of your Room

This leads us nicely onto our last point; the layout of your room. Whether you’re into your feng shui or not, there’s no denying that the layout directly impacts both the look and feel of your living space. 

Our mood is influenced by our environment and surroundings, for instance, many people struggle to concentrate and work in a cluttered environment, and then there’s the old adage of ‘tidy house, tidy mind’. 

So, if you get things wrong while formatting the layout of your furniture, your space can soon begin to look either too cluttered or completely empty and soulless. This is particularly important to consider when dealing with narrow rooms or open plan living spaces, both of which require a certain style of furniture, spacing and clear zoning. 

Feeling cosy and instilling your own character and personality into a room is key, however, you also need to make sure that your layout and furnishings work together in tandem. This will ensure that your interior is not only aesthetically pleasing but a pleasant space in which to live too. 

Did you enjoy our tips and tricks on how to avoid decor regrets? For more essential info and handy interior advice, don’t miss our I Love Wallpaper blog page. For up-to-date demos and the latest products, follow our team on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest!  

Whether you’ve hung wallpaper before or you’re completely new to it, we can all take a refresher on the wallpapering essentials. Here at I Love Wallpaper we’ve put together a handy list of tool needed for hanging wallpaper successfully so that you can update your home in no time. 

Once you’ve chosen your preferred wallpaper and the wall you want to put it, it can be easy to jump straight in and get to work installing it. But to avoid many common wallpapering mistakes, it’s a good idea to have everything prepared and ready to use as part of your wallpapering essentials kit. Investing in good quality wallpapering equipment will be a cost effective decorating strategy in the long run, and can also ensure great results! 

Tools Needed For Hanging Wallpaper 

• Paper-hanging scissors with long blades
• Wallpaper or pasting table
• Lining paper (if required)
• Plumb line measuring tool (and chalk/pencil)
• Wallpaper adhesive (paste)
• Wall sealer (if required) 
• Application brush
• Seam roller
• Wallpaper brush
• Combination smoother/cutter
• Step ladders (if required)

You may only need lining paper and wall sealer in your kit if you’re working with old walls with lumps and bumps, so these can be eliminated for your wallpaper essentials kit if they aren’t applicable to the area you’re working on. 

Have everything you need to hang wallpaper ready to go and within easy reach as a way to make the process easier for yourself. Work in a well ventilated room and if hanging wallpaper in trickier spots such as a stairwell, get an extra pair of hands to offer support when working at height to ensure safety when decorating.

Another factor to consider when gathering your wallpapering essentials is how many rolls of wallpaper you’ll need to cover the designated walls – there’s nothing worse than having to leave a job half done! Use our handy Wallpaper Calculator as a way to find out how much wallpaper you will need to cover a wall or room.
Choose your favourite wallpaper from I Love Wallpaper, including our vast paste the wall wallpaper selection, and visit our Tools & DIY department to get everything you need to hang wallpaper! For tips and tricks, be sure to check out our blog