Paint is quick, cheap and easy to change. Wallpaper gives a wall something paint cannot, from a pattern or a picture to the depth of plaster or linen, and it lasts for years longer. The right answer depends less on which is better in general and more on what each wall has to do. This is how we would decide.
What paint does better
Paint wins on speed and flexibility. You can change a colour over a weekend, and when a wall gets scuffed you touch up the mark with a brush instead of replacing anything. That makes paint the practical choice for the surfaces that take the most wear, such as the lower half of a busy hallway or the wall behind a row of coat hooks.
Paint also copes with walls that wallpaper does not like. Wallpaper needs a surface that is clean, smooth, firm and dry, so a heavily textured wall either needs a skim coat first or is better painted. And near water, paint is the safer of the two, while the spots where water hits the wall directly, inside a shower or right behind a sink or a hob, belong to tiles.
What wallpaper does better
Wallpaper does what paint cannot. A mural turns a wall into a picture, a repeating pattern gives a room rhythm, and a surface design can bring the look of limewash, plaster or linen without hiring a specialist. Subtle Plaster Wall, a soft grey plaster effect, and Mottled Linen Effect, Beige give the calm of a painted wall with far more depth.
It also lasts. Busy rooms usually need repainting every few years and quiet ones roughly once a decade, while a well-hung quality wallpaper typically lasts ten to fifteen years or more. Our papers are highly washable and wipe clean with a damp cloth, and the colours are rated 6 to 8 for lightfastness on a scale where 8 is the highest, so a wall opposite a big window keeps its colour.
The finish is different too. Our wallpapers have a matte, slightly fibrous surface that does not catch the light the way a satin or eggshell paint can, which helps on long walls where every patch and roller mark would otherwise show.
