Wallpaper is a decorated wallcovering sold in rolls and panels and applied to interior walls. This guide covers that physical product, not the digital background images that share the name. If you are redoing a room with color, texture, or a full-height mural, here is where to buy wallpaper by retailer and brand, what separates a good roll from a bad one, and the mistakes that stretch a weekend job into a three-weekend one.
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What Is Wallpaper and Who Needs It
Wallpaper is a decorative wallcovering made from paper, vinyl, or natural fiber, for people who want pattern and depth that a coat of paint cannot deliver. It is not a new idea. Hand-blocked papers, flock finishes, and silk imitations were standing in for tapestry and woven textile hangings across Europe by the 1600s, and the United Kingdom built an export trade on them long before machine printing arrived, as the documented history of the medium shows.
Three groups buy it. Homeowners redoing a dining room, powder room, or entry, where one bold design does more work than a gallon of latex. Renters who want the look without touching the landlord’s finish. And commercial buyers outfitting a salon or office, who need something rated for scrubbing.
The dividing line is permanence. Pasted wallpaper is a long commitment that holds for a decade or more, while peel-and-stick is reversible in an afternoon. Nearly every decision below traces back to which of those two you actually want.
What to Look For: Features and Buying Criteria
Check five things before ordering wallpaper: application type, material, repeat, roll coverage, and washability rating. Those five decide whether the job takes four hours or two days.
Application type. Paste-the-wall means adhesive goes on the surface and dry paper goes up over it. Prepasted has dry adhesive on the back that you activate with water. Peel-and-stick uses a pressure-sensitive backing. Paste-the-wall is fastest for a first-timer because nothing stretches while it soaks.
Material and substrate. Non-woven backing is the modern standard and strips off dry in full sheets years later. Vinyl handles kitchens and bathrooms. Grasscloth, silk, and flock give real texture but show seams and stain easily, which is why installers charge more for them.
Repeat and match type. The repeat is the vertical distance before the motif starts over. Straight match lines up edge to edge; drop match staggers each strip by half a repeat. A 25-inch drop repeat can waste a quarter of what you order, and waste is what blows the budget on large-scale wallpaper.
Roll width, height, and coverage. American double rolls typically cover about 56 square feet before waste. European and British bolts are narrower and longer. Never compare products by price per roll alone, since a cheap narrow roll can cost more per square foot than an expensive wide one.
Washability and emissions. Labels run from washable to scrubbable to strippable, and only scrubbable belongs behind a stove or sink. For a nursery, look for water-based inks and GREENGUARD Gold certification, which limits chemical emissions indoors.
| Type | Best for | Removal | Typical price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paste-the-wall | Whole rooms, uneven walls | Strips dry | $40 to $90 per double roll |
| Prepasted | Budget full-room jobs | Soak and scrape | $25 to $60 per double roll |
| Peel-and-stick | Renters, accent areas | Peels off clean | $10 to $60 per roll |
| Grasscloth and silk | Studies, dining rooms | Professional job | $100 to $300 per double roll |
| Mural panels | One focal area | Varies by backing | $150 to $600 per set |
For quantity: measure each width and height and multiply for square footage, subtract doors and windows, add 15 to 20 percent for repeat waste, then divide by the coverage on the roll label. A 12 by 12 foot room with 8-foot ceilings needs roughly 7 to 8 double rolls.
What to Avoid When Buying Wallpaper
The costliest mistake is ordering short and topping up later. Batch numbers, called dye lots, drift between production runs, and the second delivery rarely matches the first in daylight.
Splitting an order across two purchases. Manufacturers tell you to get everything in one go for exactly this reason. A visible color shift halfway across a room cannot be fixed without redoing all of it.
Putting peel-and-stick on textured drywall. Orange peel and knockdown finishes trap air under the adhesive, and edges lift within weeks. Skim-coat smooth first, or switch to a pasted wallpaper that bridges minor unevenness.
Trusting the on-screen color. Monitor calibration, paper stock, and gloss level all shift the result. Get a sample and live with it for two days before committing.
Buying unlabeled marketplace rolls for a whole room. Listings with no thickness spec, no repeat measurement, and no match type are fine for a closet and risky for a dining room. Thin stock tears at the seam when you trim it.
Where to Buy Wallpaper In Store
Home Depot and Lowe’s
Both big-box chains stock traditional rolls, prepasted paper, and peel-and-stick, with the deepest catalog online and a smaller curated rack in the aisle. Home Depot carries RoomMates, NuWallpaper, and Brewster; Lowe’s carries Graham & Brown, Scott Living, and Allen + Roth. Look in the paint department, not home decor. Seeing a raised finish under warm light is where a lot of online picks fall apart.
Target and Walmart
Target leans modern and minimal through its Opalhouse and Project 62 lines and stocks Tempaper. Walmart runs budget-first, with RoomMates, Brewster, and its Better Homes & Gardens line. Both are stronger online than on the shelf, so call the store before driving over.
Paint Stores and Independent Wallcovering Shops
Sherwin-Williams stores and many Benjamin Moore dealers keep wallcovering books you can flip through, and independent decorating shops carry trade-grade lines the chains never stock. They will also order samples for you and often know local installers by name. If you are coordinating with trim color, see our guides to Sherwin-Williams paint and Behr paint.
Where to Buy Wallpaper Online
Online is where the real selection lives, and three sources cover almost every scenario in the United States.
Amazon and Wayfair
Amazon carries the widest peel-and-stick wallpaper catalog, including Tempaper, RoomMates, NuWallpaper, and thousands of unbranded rolls. Wayfair is the better tool for pasted goods: its filters cover application type, repeat size, and washability, and it lists York Wallcoverings, A-Street Prints, and Brewster alongside boutique labels. Samples ship for a few dollars from both.
Direct From the Brand
York Wallcoverings, the oldest American manufacturer in the category, plus Graham & Brown, Chasing Paper, Hygge & West, and Tempaper all sell direct. Direct is the right call for custom sizing, full mural sets, and the complete archive, since retailers only carry a subset of any collection. Anthropologie curates a small, design-led selection that is mostly removable.
Specialty and Custom Sites
Spoonflower produces wallpaper on demand from an independent artist marketplace, the fastest route to something nobody else has. Wallpaper Direct USA imports British and European brands and sends free samples before you commit. For photographic murals, Photowall, Rebel Walls, and Murals Your Way size panels to your measurements.
What People Are Saying About Wallpaper
Review consensus on Amazon and Walmart listings splits along quality lines, and the complaints are more useful than the praise. Buyers of mid-tier and premium removable rolls repeatedly mention that seams disappear cleanly and that panels come off without pulling the finish, which is the whole reason renters choose the format.
The complaints cluster in three places. Alignment tops the list, with reviewers on Walmart listings writing that the motif simply does not line up no matter how they turn the strip. Adhesion failure on textured drywall is second, and it is almost always a prep problem rather than a defect. Third is inconsistent quality control on unbranded rolls, where buyers report thin stock and sheets with weak adhesive. Independent DIY review blogs covering removable wallpaper flag the same wrinkling on imperfect walls.
That first complaint is why the repeat and match type above matter more than the price. A cheap straight-match design is far more forgiving than a bargain drop-match one.
Top Picks
These five wallpaper brands were selected on catalog depth, backing quality, and removal behavior, the three attributes that show up most in buyer complaints.
Best overall: Graham & Brown. Producing in the United Kingdom since 1946, with a catalog spanning damask, geometric, and raised-relief lines, and a paste-the-wall system that is genuinely easier for a first-timer. Mid-range pricing. Check price on Amazon
Best peel-and-stick: Chasing Paper. New York based, making removable panels in 2-foot widths that align by repeat. The adhesive holds for years on smooth primed drywall and lifts clean. Strong range of botanical and kids’ motifs. Shop the brand direct
Best budget: generic peel-and-stick rolls. Rolls in the 17 to 18 inch by 118 inch size start around $10 to $20. Quality varies by seller, so favor listings that state thickness in mils and name the match type. Fine for a feature area or cabinet liner. See the range on Amazon
Best luxury: Hygge & West. Founded by Aimee Lagos and Christiana Coop, produced in the United States on clay-coated FSC-certified stock with water-based inks. Collaborations with independent illustrators give it a look closer to art than decor. Roughly $150 per double roll. Browse the collection
Best for rentals: Tempaper. One of the original removable wallpaper brands, woman-founded, with panels that lift off in one piece without residue. Designer collaborations with Genevieve Gorder and the Novogratz widen the range. Sold direct and at Target, Wayfair, and Amazon. Check price on Amazon
Start by measuring the room and pulling the repeat figure off the listing, then get one sample of your top two candidates before committing to a full order of wallpaper. If the drywall is textured, budget for skim-coating or choose a pasted product instead. Renters should default to removable panels. Pairing the finished look with new curtains or wood flooring is easier once the design is chosen, not before.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can peel-and-stick wallpaper go on textured drywall?
No, not reliably. Pressure-sensitive backing needs a smooth, clean, primed substrate to bond. Orange peel and knockdown finishes leave air gaps that turn into lifted edges. Skim-coat first, or hang a pasted product over lining paper, which bridges unevenness that adhesive backing cannot.
What is the difference between a single roll and a double roll?
American rolls are priced by the single but almost always packaged as a double, roughly 56 square feet of usable coverage. European bolts are sold as one continuous length instead. Compare cost per square foot rather than per roll, or you will misjudge the total badly.
Can you paint over wallpaper instead of stripping it?
You can, but only over tight, well-adhered paper, and only with an oil-based or shellac primer first. A water-based primer soaks through and loosens the adhesive. Seams and embossing stay visible afterward, so treat it as a stopgap.
Are samples free, and how many should you get?
Some sellers, including Wallpaper Direct USA, send them free; most retailers charge a few dollars each. Get three at most. Tape them up and check in morning light, afternoon light, and lamp light, because gloss stock changes character far more than a paint chip does.
How long does a pasted job actually last?
A properly installed non-woven or vinyl job holds up 10 to 15 years in a low-traffic room. Peel-and-stick has a shorter practical life, typically 3 to 5 years before edges start to relax, though it comes down cleanly at any point.
Reviewed by the wheretobuyguides.com editorial team. Prices and retailer availability verified August 2026.