Paint vs. Wallpaper

[jen6889]

Help!! My kids have ruined my walls!!! All over my walls, I have dirty handprints, fingerprints, scuff marks from boxes or toys, not to mention my son seems to think the wall is his personal tissue (ewwww...).
These walls were just painted before we moved in back in October too! I tried cleaning them off, but it makes it worse. So dh and I have come to the conclusion that we need to either paint the entire house with Kids Room Paint or Wallpaper the walls with paper that we can just wipe the dirt off of. We are not big on wallpaper - would prefer our plain white walls, but this is getting ridiculous and we have to do something.

My question is which to do guys think is more practical and least expensive? Painting the whole house with Kids Room Paint or just putting up Wallpaper?

[tasker109]

if you go to the paint department and carefully look for commercial grade paint, you will be more than satisfied. its totally scrubbable. i painted my kitchen 10 years ago with it and it still looks fresh. im getting tired of it though...hehe.....but 10 years in the kitchen is pretty darn good!!

[hattielee]

Paint!

Paint can be touched up, not everything comes off wallpaper and it can get nicked, cut etc......

[AndersonGal]

If you think you may sell your house down the road, paint.
One house I looked at had wallpaper in every room. Mostly Disney too. A beautiful house otherwise, all I could think was what a mess I would have tearing off all that wallpaper

[Bones899]

Paint, cuz as they said before, you can always touch it up. And there are all sorts of different paints to choose from.

[freesurfer]

Well last summer we painted and put up wallpaper border in the little ones rooms.

Let me tell you.....ARGH to both!!!!!! Don't do anything until they are older!! haha


Yep, that's my advice!!

[Pipanella]

Without a doubt.......PAINT. You could do a border, like freesurfer did. But put it at the top.....unless your kids are spidermen......they won't be able to harm it up by the ceiling, and you can spice it up that way. Borders are easy to hang and easy to remove.

[wss4]

PAINT, PAINT, PAINT

It is amazing what new paint can do for a room. I have three little ones. 8, 6, an 2. They have destroyed the walls. We are currently redoing the kitchen and living room and have just finished painting the kitchen. It was brown paneling. We live in a mobile home. We painted it a sea green and WOW It brightened up the whole room so much. I am getting ready to paint the living room Burgundy.

Use color!!

Good Luck!

[princess011]

PAINT!!! I just helped my mom take down some of her wallpaper and it was a pain!!! Plus, I'm not a big fan of how wallpaper looks.

[kat]

PAINT! I hate wallpaper - it took me almost an entire month to get it off the walls this year here in a bedroom, bathroom & kitchen.

You might want to see if maybe your town does a paint exchange in the spring. We do one here - people take in their old paint to the dump & they see what is still good and then anyone can pick up new paint for free. I was able to pick up enough paint to do a wonderful mural in my son's room, redo my bathroom & also do the kitchen. My only paint cost was for white base and that was pretty cheap at Walmart (their store brand works fine, no need to use the more expensive stuff). Make sure you use base & let it dry well - it makes the color coats go on much more evenly and seems to help with clean up too - or at least it has here because none of the paints were marked as "kids" or "commercial" paints, yet I can & have scrubbed them without damage. I did wallpaper a little bit for accent in the kitchen - but only because I was walking past the second hand store & saw this adorable paper for .25 (a brand new double roll too!).

Also, I was able to get a can of chalkboard paint at the swap (it runs about 2.39/can) and that's really kept our little one from writing on the wall since he knows he has a nice big place that he can doodle on without getting in trouble.

[hannahsmom]

i think wallpaper (the RIGHT wallpaper) looks great. but - i agree w/ everybody else. paint. not only does it hold up better, it's SUBSTANTIALLY cheaper. (gawd, you're making me nervous about my house in 3 or4 years! ) and kat is right. you need to do a base paint. and you NEED to prep. the surface being prepped has EVERYTHING to do w/ how it holds up. trisodium phosphate works great, but you have to rinse. porter paints makes something called soilax. it works as well, but no rinsing, so it's what i use. (if no porter in your area, call your local paint store. they'll carry something.) a note - if you hire someone to do the work, he'll say, "not nececessary". don't believe it. wipe them down yourself the night before. long term it'll be worth the few dollars and the effort. good luck! paula.

[buckeyemomma]

I go with the paint also...If you ever had to remove 3 or 4 rooms of UGLY wall paper and I do mean UGLY!! Then I believe you would never go with wallpaper. And a border does do wonders.

[Brittwoman]

PAINT!!!

[Brendabutt]

Guess I'm outnumbered here. I just bought new paper for my bathroom. I like the way wallpaper looks, but I think paint is the "in" thing right now. I have to admit getting the old paper off my walls has been a major pain, but that paper has been up for 10 years and nothing is wrong with it except I'm sick of looking at it.

[jen6889]

Well! Looks like the Paint wins!

I'm not big on wallpaper myself and neither is my dh, but I think the right wallpaper in the right place looks great. I wasn't looking forward to hanging paper though! I helped my mom do it in her kitchen when I was in high school and I remember well how much of a pain it was to get that paper up just right! UGH!

After what's been said here, I am thinking that the man who owned and re-did this house before we bought it didn't use the best of paints. Of course, he didn't do the best of jobs on this house either! He installed the new windows himself and swore up and down they didn't leak - yeah... right. Then why do I feel such a horrible draft from most of the windows in this house?? He didn't even put in insulation around the windows. Come spring, we have to rip them all out and re-install them correctly. Oh what a task that will be. There are also multiple other things he didn't do right either that we've got to go back and fix. I expect we'll be fixing up the house 'til the day we move out!

Thanks so much for the opinions on the paint/wallpaper issue. I don't intend on doing any of until after the baby comes, but at least I know I am going to paint the walls and can be looking out for a good deal on some paint!