Inside: How to install white brick wallpaper to get the faux brick wall effect in your home! Love this product and how easy it is to use.
Today, we are going deep into the world that is wallpaper – more specifically, how to use higher end wallpaper to achieve a very expensive textured brick wall look in your home. Brick and coloured brick walls are very in style these days – some call them boho decor, others say it’s more industrial. No matter what, it’s unlikely that everyone has access or ability to have a real brick wall in their house!
So this is how I took an afternoon and installed faux white brick wallpaper in our basement! I love love how it turned out. Stick around to the end of this blog because I’ve done a bunch of other wallpaper projects too that you might like).
Supplies to install Faux Brick Wall Paper
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- Contemporary Faux Brick Wall Paper
- Heavy duty Wall Paper Paste
- Synthetic Brush
- Wall Paper Tray
- Wall Paper Scraper
Faux Brick Wall Before
Here’s the wall before. It’s just a wall. A blue wall. It has a weird window ledge and an unfortunate asymmetrical electric box on one end. This whole room has gone through a bunch of transformations. We have since turned it into a playroom and you can see that playroom transformation here.
We searched high and low for a viable design option that would disguise the weirdness of this wall while also adding some style and texture to the room. The floors are wide, soft wood planks – so something cool and stone was a natural choice to balance the elements.
We toyed with more planking (but we do that A LOT) and we also toyed with real partial bricks – but HOLY expensive Batman! That’s when we turned to Walls Republic; a high-end wall coverings retailer that ships to Canada and the US.
Choosing a Faux Brick Wall Paper
Okay – a word about wall paper. It’s much better than it once was and the options are INCREDIBLE. This is NOT your Granny’s wall paper, people! haha
We were able to find a bunch of different brick patterns – and Walls Republic sends out samples in 24″ squares for free! Perfect when you’re trying to decide between colour and textures and so on.
We settled on the Contemporary Brick in White. It will lend that stone look to our nautical-industrial room without being overly heavy or dark. To do our 14 foot wall, we ordered three rolls, but ended up using only about 1 and a quarter rolls.
Installing Faux Brick Wall Paper
Installation was straightforward. I’ve hung pre-pasted paper before (that’s where you activate the glue on the paper with lukewarm water) – but this paper is ‘paste the wall’ – which to be honest, I found a lot easier to work with. I’ve done a couple other paste the wall projects – and I have a more in-depth tutorial explaining the steps for hanging wall paper using that paste method here.
I used this wall paste and simply applied it to our clean, dry wall with a synthetic brush and then placed my measured piece of wall paper over it, smoothing it down with a smooth edge. It was nice to not have dripping and heavy paper, and the paste allowed me to really reposition the pattern to get it perfect.
This whole wall took me about two hours from start to finish!
I let everything settle overnight and in the morning there were only two spots that needed a bit more paste – so I added it with a teeny craft brush and that was it.
Look at how much brighter it is down here now! I’m quite impressed with how this paper looks. The faux brick detail looks real. It fooled SO MANY people. Guests would come over to our house and immediately want to touch the brick wall.
Seriously, you have to get up SUPER close to even know it’s paper and not real brick. I really think this update is helping to inch us closer to the nautical-industrial vibe we’re aiming for in the Family Room.
As I mentioned, this room came a long way after we installed this paper. We have since replaced the vinyl flooring and completely renovated the room. Our next big renovation happens in the second half of the basement. You can see here how we hired a contractor to help us level that floor as well as how I refinished some vintage lockers to act as storage.
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