Wallpaper in Yalova, hung for owners who are away

Three things go wrong on wallpaper in a property that is shut for most of the year, and all three start with moisture rather than with the paper. Condensation forms on the inside of cold external walls in an unheated flat, and a damp wall surface weakens the paste line at the edge of each drop, so the seams lift and curl. A closed flat also dries slowly, so paste applied in a cold room can stay soft for far longer than the label suggests, and paper hung on soft paste shrinks back at the joints as it finally dries.

The third is the one owners notice last. A vinyl surfaced covering is close to impermeable, so on an external wall that is already damp it traps the moisture between the paper and the plaster. That is exactly the condition mould grows in, and it grows out of sight until a dark patch appears through the paper or the smell gives it away when you open the flat in June.

None of this is an argument against wallpaper in Yalova. It is an argument for choosing the wall. Internal partition walls, the wall behind a bed, a hallway, a feature wall away from an outside corner: these behave in a closed flat much as they would in a lived in home. We say at survey which walls in your flat fall into which category, and if a wall has live damp we recommend dealing with that first and not papering over it.

A screen is a poor way to choose a wall covering, because it shows you a colour temperature and a scale that your room does not have. What works better is a photograph of the actual sample held against your own wall, taken in the room own light, once in the morning and once in the late afternoon. The same grey looks warm in one and cold in the other, and seeing both prevents the most common remote regret.

Scale is the other trap. A pattern that looks balanced in a catalogue photograph can be far too large for a small Yalova bedroom, so we photograph the sample with something of known size beside it and tell you the size of the pattern repeat rather than only its name. For a wall with a strong pattern we also send a photograph of the wall with the drop widths marked, so you can see where the repeat will land relative to the window and the corners.

Confirm the paper, the batch and the quantity in a written message before we cut anything. That single habit removes most of the disputes that arise at a distance, because there is then a record of exactly which product was approved, in which shade, and how many rolls it was expected to take.

The roll count comes from measurement on site, not from the floor area of the flat. We measure the width of each wall to be covered and the floor to ceiling height at more than one point, because older Yalova buildings are rarely exactly square and a ceiling that drops across a room changes how many full drops you get from a roll.

Pattern repeat is what turns measurement into material. Every drop has to be cut so the pattern matches its neighbour, and the offcut from that matching is waste. A plain or random match paper wastes very little; a large repeat with a straight match wastes considerably more, which is why two papers with the same roll size can need different quantities for the same wall. We tell you the repeat and the resulting roll count together, so the number is checkable rather than asserted.

Small openings such as a single door or a window are usually not deducted, because the offcuts around them are rarely reusable. And the order always includes at least one roll above the calculated need, from the same batch, which stays in the flat. A wall covering with no spare is a wall covering that cannot be repaired, and in a property you visit twice a year small damage is discovered late.

The old covering comes off. Papering over an existing layer looks like a saving and behaves like a liability, because the new paste soaks through and softens the old adhesive, and when the old layer releases it takes the new one with it. Stripping also reveals what is actually on the wall, which is the only way to find a damp patch or a failed plaster repair before it is sealed under a new covering.

After stripping, the residue of old paste is washed off, holes and cracks are filled, and the wall is sanded flat. Wallpaper is less forgiving of a wavy wall than paint is, because a seam crossing a hollow shows as a shadow line under any raking light. The wall then takes a primer so it does not drink the paste out of the paper, which is what causes dry patches and edges that never grip.

Setting out comes last before hanging. The first drop is plumbed rather than trusted to a corner, and hanging works away from the main window so the seams are not lit from the side along their whole length. On a strong pattern the setting out also decides which part of the repeat lands at the corner and above the door, and it is worth agreeing that in writing on a photograph rather than leaving it to chance.

Almost everything that determines whether wallpaper lasts happens before the paper is visible, so the report is taken in the order the work is done. The wall with the old covering stripped off. The filled and sanded wall. The primer. The first drop hung with a level against it. Each wall as it is completed. Then close range photographs of the seams, the internal and external corners, and the cut outs around sockets and switches, because those are where poor work shows first.

The finishing photographs are worth asking for specifically. A seam that is slightly open, a pattern that steps at a corner, a socket cut with a ragged edge: all of these are invisible in a wide photograph of a finished room and obvious in a close one. If you see them in the report while the crew is still in the flat, they are a correction. If you see them yourself in July, they are a conversation.

The last item in the report is the spare roll, photographed with its label and its batch number readable, in the place it is being left in the flat. That photograph is the thing you will actually need years later, when somebody moves a chair into the wall and you want a repair that matches.

Wallpaper wants the opposite conditions to paint while it dries. A newly papered room should be kept closed and free of draughts until the paste has set, because a cross breeze dries the edges faster than the middle and pulls the seams open. Only after that does the room get aired. In a flat that has been shut all winter, both phases take longer than they would in a heated home, so finishing one to two weeks before you land is a sensible margin.

Season matters for a different reason than it does with exterior work. Hanging paper in an unheated flat in midwinter means paste that stays soft for days, and a wall that is cold enough to condense is a wall that should not be papered at all until that is resolved. Spring, once the building has warmed a little, is the easiest window for an empty Yalova flat.

If the flat is let to short stay guests, the useful slot is between bookings or before the season starts, and the first booking rather than your own arrival becomes the deadline. Tell us which date we are working to when you ask for the quote, and the schedule is built backwards from it.