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Installation guide
Eight steps, drawn rather than described, for hanging the non-woven wallpaper we print. The drawings carry no words on purpose — the person hanging your wall should be able to follow them whatever language they read. If you would rather not do it at all, we install across the UAE.
Your drops are printed LARGER than the wall they cover, with the design carried on into the extra. You do not create the allowance on site — it is already there, and the wall’s own edges are the lines you cut on.
Do not trim a drop to size on the table. Everything beyond the wall is deliberate, and it is cut on the wall, after the drop is hung.
Nothing specialised. The only two worth buying properly are a soft smoother — not a hard spatula — and a knife you are willing to re-blade every few cuts.
Use a paste made for non-woven wallcovering. Do not use a heavy-duty vinyl adhesive or a thick ready-mixed tub paste — they do not release, and they will take the wall surface with them if the paper is ever removed.
The wall must be dry, clean, sound and even. Fill and sand any damage, remove loose paint, and prime a porous or newly plastered wall so it does not drink the paste before the paper grips. Never hang on a damp wall.
Do not trust the corner — almost no corner is plumb. Measure in from it by the FINISHED width of the first drop — the wall width divided by the number of drops, not the width of the sheet in your hand, which is wider because it carries the corner allowance. Draw a vertical line from ceiling to floor with a level. The line is where the first drop’s inner edge lands, and every drop lines up to it rather than to the wall.
Non-woven wallpaper is hung paste-the-wall. Roll an even coat across a band a little wider than the first drop, right into the corner and up to the ceiling. Do not soak it, and do not paste further ahead than you can hang before it skins over.
Start at the top and let the printed allowance run past the ceiling line, the skirting and the corner — all three are trimmed later. Bring the drop’s INNER edge to your pencil line and let the rest fall. Check the number on the back: the drops are cut for your wall and they go up in order.
Work from the centre of the drop outwards and downwards with the soft smoother, pushing air and paste to the edges. Never drag a hard spatula across a printed face. Wipe any paste off the front immediately with a damp cloth, before it dries.
Printed drops are not butted, and the overlap is already printed into them. Lay the next drop OVER the first and slide it until the image matches across the overlap, then press it down. A printed drop is cut from the roll, so its edge is raw and shows white — and non-woven moves a little as it dries, so a butt joint that opens by half a millimetre shows the wall behind it.
Hold a long metal straight edge firmly down the centre of the overlap and cut through BOTH layers in one steady stroke with a sharp blade. Peel away the top waste strip, lift the edge and pull out the strip underneath, then smooth both edges down and wipe off the paste. The two cut edges now meet exactly, with no white line and no gap. Work across the wall and finish with the first drop.
Press a metal straight edge into the angle and run a sharp blade along it in one continuous pass — at the ceiling, at the skirting, and into the corner at each end of the wall. Change the blade often — a dull blade tears the paper instead of cutting it. Sponge off the last of the paste and leave the wall to dry.
A hard spatula on a printed face burnishes it, scratches it and pushes paste through the seams. A soft smoother does the same job without marking the print. If you take one thing from this page, take this one.
In this climate a newly plastered or skimmed wall holds construction moisture for weeks even when the surface feels dry. Covering it early is the most common cause of a wall that lifts at the seams two months later and gets blamed on the paper.
A vent blowing straight onto a freshly hung wall dries the paste before it has gripped, and the edges let go first. Keep the room at a normal temperature, close the nearest diffuser or redirect it, and leave the wall alone for a day.
Wipe the wall down immediately before pasting, not the day before. A fine layer of dust is enough to stop paste bonding, and in the Gulf a clean wall does not stay clean overnight.
If the room is not yet air-conditioned, hang early in the day. Paste skins over far faster at 40°C than any instruction sheet from Europe assumes.
We install across the UAE, and for a commercial fit-out it is usually the sensible choice: a corridor of matched drops, a double-height reception wall or a specified job with a snagging list is not a first-time task. Installation is added to the order, and we come with the right paste, blades and smoothers rather than whatever is on site.
Ask us to install itBecause the allowance is printed in rather than left to you. Every drop carries 5 cm top and bottom, the first and last carry extra on their outside to be trimmed into the corners, and every inner seam carries its overlap. The design is carried on into all of it, so wherever the blade lands the image still runs to the edge. Do not trim a drop to size before hanging it: everything past the wall is deliberate, and it is cut on the wall.
The wall. The wallpaper we print is non-woven, which is hung paste-the-wall: you roll the paste onto the wall and hang the drop dry. Nothing is soaked, nothing is folded and left to soak, and the drop goes up straight from the roll. It is faster, cleaner and far more forgiving than the old paste-the-paper method.
Overlap them by about 30 mm, then double cut. This is where a printed mural differs from a factory-made wallcovering: a factory roll has sealed, trimmed edges that can be butted, but a printed drop is cut from the roll, so its edge is raw and shows as a white line. Non-woven also moves slightly as it dries, so a butt joint that opens by half a millimetre shows the wall behind it — usually the day after it was hung, when everything looked perfect.
Cutting through both layers of the overlap at once so the two edges match exactly. Hold a long metal straight edge down the centre of the overlap, cut through both layers in one steady stroke, then remove both waste strips — the one on top, and the one underneath by lifting the edge. The join closes with no white edge and no gap. It is the standard method for printed murals, and the cut does not have to be perfect: keep to the middle of the overlap and go slowly.
A single feature wall is usually two to four hours for two people, once the wall itself is ready. Preparing the wall — filling, sanding, priming and letting it dry — takes longer than hanging it, and it is the part that decides whether the result lasts.
A short wall, yes. A full-height drop is much easier with two: one holding the top against the line and one keeping the edge true as it falls. For a double-height wall or a ceiling, two people is not a preference.
A good-quality paste made for non-woven wallcovering. Do not use heavy-duty vinyl adhesive or a thick ready-mixed tub paste: they grip harder than the wall surface does, so removing the paper later takes the skim coat with it. If in doubt, ask us what we use.
Almost certainly the drops were butted rather than overlapped and double cut. The edge of a printed drop is a raw cut through the material, so it is white, and the moment the join opens by a fraction — which non-woven does as it dries — that white edge and the wall behind it both show. It cannot be corrected by pushing the drops together afterwards; it is prevented at the seam, which is why an overlap is allowed for in every drop we supply.
Almost always one of three things: the wall was not dry, the wall was not primed and drank the paste before the paper gripped, or an air-conditioning vent was blowing on it while it dried. In this climate the first and third are the common ones, and both happen while the surface looks perfectly fine.
Yes — we install across the UAE, and installation is added to the order rather than arranged separately. For a commercial fit-out it is usually the sensible choice: a corridor of matched drops or a double-height wall is not a first-time job.
Non-woven wallpaper is designed to strip dry: lift a corner and pull the sheet away in one piece, leaving the wall ready to repaint. That is true only if the right paste was used and the wall was primed — which is the real reason both of those steps matter.
Sizes, finishes, how a wall is printed and delivered
Enter width × height and see the total for your own wall
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Scrubbable, washable and what wears a corridor wall out
This page prints on one or two sheets — print it and give it to whoever is hanging the wall. · Reviewed 2026-10-03
