How to measure a room for wallpapering

If you are going to wallpaper a room, a feature wall, a hall, landing and stairs or even an entire house you will need some idea of how many rolls of wallpaper to buy. With the cost of wallpaper becoming more and more expensive and some shops only ordering in rolls rather than keeping stock you need to have a fairly good idea how many rolls of wallpaper you need. To do this you need to measure each room or area.

Measuring for wallpaper

To measure for wallpaper you will need the following:

• A notepad
• A pen or pencil
• A tape measure

To measure a complete room for wallpaper, measure around the perimeter for the room, include all doors and windows if the paper goes over the top and /or under them. If you have a picture rail or if the paper does not go over the top of windows and doors only measure the papered area and note this down on your note pad.

Now you need to measure the height of the area to be papered, this may be from the skirting boards to the ceiling or coving / cornice, a picture rail or dado rail. Again make a note of this figure.
You can measure in either feet and inches or metric, it doesn’t matter.

Feature wall

If you are measuring for a feature wall the principle is the same as above except you only measure the one wall you wish to paper, again make a note of the measurements.

Hall, Landing, and stairs

If you are wallpapering a hallway or hall landing and stairs, again the principle is the same, just treat the upstairs and one room and the downstairs as another room, you can either add the measurements together of treat them as two separate measurements. For more details on measuring a hall, landing and stairs this post is a good resource.

Calculating how many rolls of wallpaper needed

Once you have measured the area you are going to wallpaper and have made a note of the perimeter and height you can now go and use this great wallpaper calculator to find out how many rolls of wallpaper you need. If you have measured in feet and inches the calculator allows you to convert these measurements into metric.

Watch this quick video to see how easy the wallpaper calculator is to use.

Lining paper

If you are going to line your walls with lining paper rather than wallpaper, measure the same way as described above and use the wallpaper calculator, this calculator allows for a standard roll of wallpaper (10.05m by 0.53m) and although lining paper tends to be wider at 0.56m the calculator will give you a guide number of rolls, and as lining paper is cheap if you end up with a roll over it doesn’t matter.