Non-woven wallpaper

Non-woven wallpaper is the reason hanging wallpaper stopped being a chore. Instead of pasting the paper and waiting for it to soak, you roll paste onto the wall and hang the length dry — no booking table, no expansion, no guessing whether the seams will open as it dries.

Why non-woven wallpaper hangs differently

The backing is a blend of cellulose and textile fibers, which means it does not swell when wet. A traditional paper stretches as it absorbs paste and shrinks back as it dries; that movement is what opens seams and lifts corners. Non-woven stays dimensionally stable from the moment it leaves the roll, so a butt seam that looks right when you hang it still looks right a week later.

The second advantage shows up years later: it strips dry. You lift a corner and pull the full length off the wall in one piece, leaving the wall ready for the next paper instead of an afternoon of steaming and scraping.

Hanging it yourself

Paste the wall one length at a time, hang the strip from the top, and smooth from the center outward with a plastic spatula rather than a brush. Trim top and bottom with a fresh blade against a broad knife. Because the material does not stretch, pattern matching is genuinely repeatable — the second length lines up with the first without coaxing.

Roll sizes in feet and inches

Rolls are 33 ft long (10.05 m). At 20.5 in wide (52 cm) that covers about 56 sq ft, the same ground as a standard American double roll; wider European rolls of 27.5 in (70 cm) cover roughly 75 sq ft, which means fewer seams across a large wall. Measure the wall, divide by the usable width, and add one roll from the same batch.

Where to look next

Most designs across our themes are printed on this backing — see botanical wallpaper, geometric wallpaper and historical wallpaper. For the materials that hang differently, look at paper wallpaper, cork wallcovering and raffia wallpaper. Mills working almost exclusively in non-woven: Casamance, Masureel and Sandberg.

Ordering from the US

Duties and taxes are included in the price shown, so nothing is collected on delivery. Orders ship insured from the Netherlands; the product page states the backing, the repeat and the roll dimensions before you order.