When it’s time to change the look of your walls, you have the option to either paint or wallpaper. It can sometimes be difficult to decide between the two, with each having their own advantages and disadvantages. Of the two options however, it’s often better to paint, and here are five reasons why.
Painting Is Usually a More Affordable Option
While the cost of both painting and wallpaper can range depending on the type of paint, design of the wallpaper, and so on, the former is generally the more affordable option.
For example, typically one square foot of wallpaper costs about $0.50 just for the wallpaper itself, then you have to add the cost of labour and materials on top of that. However, the cost of paint is about $1.00 – $1.50 per square foot, but this also usually includes all the labour& materials costs. If you do the painting yourself, then it’s even more affordable.
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Painting Takes Less Time to Complete
Whether you’re doing the work yourself or hiring a contractor, you will definitely need to consider how long it is going to take to finish your wall-redecorating project.
With either option, you’re going to need to set aside time to make any repairs to the walls and apply a coat of primer. At this point, if you are simply painting the walls, then it’s just a simple matter of taking out your paintbrushes and rollers and getting to work. It also usually only takes a few seconds or so to cover a square foot of the wall, which means that you’ll get any job, large or small, done in a very reasonable timeframe.
However, if you are applying wallpaper, there are additional steps and more meticulous work needed to end up with a great looking room. While many wallpapers are self-adhesive, in some cases you will need to spend extra time and money applying wallpaper paste. Then, when you actually have to apply the wallpaper, you need to do it very carefully and slowly to avoid gaps, bubbles, and creases.
Paint is Much Easier to Replace
Eventually, you’re going to want to change the look of a room and its walls. This can either be a simple project or a frustrating and time consuming one depending on if the wall was previously painted or if it was wallpapered.
With a painted wall, the process is often straightforward, usually requiring just a bit of prep work, and then a fresh coat of paint or two. On the other hand, replacing wallpaper is a much more involved task.
When replacing old wallpaper, you have to spend a lot of time stripping and removing the wallpaper, removing any residual adhesive, make repairs, and then apply a coat of primer. Only after that can you actually add a fresh coat of paint or new wallpaper to the wall.
Wallpaper Can Be Very Temperamental
If you’re in an environment where the weather changes by the hour, or are thinking about redesigning a room in that experiences high humidity such as a bathroom, then you have to be very careful when deciding whether to paint or wallpaper.
Paint, especially high quality latex-based paint is highly durable and resilient to changes in environment, meaning that you don’t have to worry about it peeling or worse. However, wallpaper can be very temperamental, and will often peel away in bathroom environments where the humidity is high, or even within other rooms in a home during the peak of summer.
Painted Walls Require Very Little Upkeep
When your wall painting or wallpapering project is complete, the hope is that your results will be at least semi-permanent. For most of us, we’d like for our walls to be something that looks good, but requires little to no thought or time to ensure that theywill still look good over time.
Painted walls often very easy to clean, maintain, and repair, even with the large issues such as holes taking a few minutes to repair. On the other hand, wallpaper can cause headaches on occasion.
For one, you have to worry about the trouble wallpaper has with humidity, but you also need to be very concerned about even the slightest damage. Unlike paint, wallpaper can be very difficult to successfully repair and patch, so you might find that even small repairs take a considerable amount of time and effort.
Author Bio: Michael Smith is an Inbound Marketing Consultant at Powered by Search, writing on behalf of Eco painting, a painter in Toronto that provides residential, commercial, interior & exterior painting contracting services.
