Wallpaper a Feature Wall With Cole and Son Hummingbirds in 8 Steps

Start with the batch number, not the tape measure

Before a single strip goes up, check the batch or shade number printed on the label inside each Cole and Son roll. Hummingbirds, reference 100/14069 among others, is printed in runs, and two rolls from different runs can differ enough at the seam to show under daylight. Buy every roll you need in one order, confirm the numbers match across all of them, and keep one spare roll sealed in case a strip tears during the hang.

Measure the wall height in three places. Walls are rarely true, and the tallest reading is the one you cut to. A typical 2.4m wall plus the 68.5cm repeat allowance and 10cm trim top and bottom means each cut strip eats roughly 2.6m of a 10m roll, so one roll yields three usable drops. A wall 3m wide needs six drops at 52cm each, which is two rolls with offcuts left for the area above a door or window. Write the drop count on the wall in pencil before you cut anything.

Eight steps, start to finish

1. Strip old paper, fill cracks with a ready-mixed filler, sand flat, and let the wall dry. Bare plaster needs a coat of diluted paste or a proprietary size first so the top coat does not soak in unevenly.
2. Mark a true vertical 50cm from your starting corner using a spirit level or a chalk plumb line. The corner is never plumb, so the first strip follows the line, not the wall edge.
3. Cut your first drop to height plus 10cm. With a straight match like Hummingbirds, lay the roll against the cut strip and align the pattern before cutting the second drop, so the birds and branches carry across the seam.
4. Paste the wall, not the paper, for this clay-coated stock. Use a heavy-duty ready-mixed tub adhesive made for non-woven and specialty papers, applied with a roller in a band slightly wider than one drop.
5. Hang the first strip to the pencil line, leaving the 5cm overlap at ceiling and skirting. Smooth from the centre outward with a felt-edged or plastic smoother, never a stiff metal blade that scores the print.
6. Butt the next strip edge to edge. Do not overlap. Push the seam closed with light fingertip pressure and roll it with a seam roller only after fifteen minutes, when the paste has grabbed.
7. Trim top and bottom against a broad knife using a fresh snap-off blade for every two or three cuts. A dull blade drags the damp paper and leaves a furred edge.
8. Wipe stray paste off the face immediately with a clean damp sponge, rinsing often. Dried paste on a matt clay surface dulls the colour and will not buff out later.

The corner problem nobody mentions on the roll label

An internal corner is where most feature walls go wrong. The instinct is to wrap one strip around the corner and carry on, but no corner is straight from floor to ceiling, so a wrapped strip throws the pattern off plumb on the second wall and the error grows with every drop after it.

The working method is to cut the strip vertically at the corner. Measure from the last full drop to the corner at top, middle, and bottom, add 1.5cm, and cut the strip to that width plus the wrap. Hang the wider piece so 1.5cm turns onto the second wall. Then take the offcut, measure its width, and hang it on the second wall against a fresh plumb line struck from the corner, overlapping the small wrap underneath.

This loses pattern continuity at that one seam. On Hummingbirds the busy print hides the break far better than a plain stripe would, which is one reason this design forgives a corner that a geometric paper exposes. Accept the lost match in the corner and keep every other seam plumb. A feature wall that runs plumb across three metres reads as crisp even when one corner does not align perfectly.

External corners behave differently. Wrap 2.5cm around the edge, then start the next drop from a plumb line on the new face. An external corner is usually more true than an internal one, so the wrap is less likely to drift.

Paste, drying time, and why this paper curls

Clay-coated papers absorb water from the adhesive faster than vinyl, so they expand, then contract as they dry. Apply too little paste and the edges lift within an hour. Apply too much and it squeezes out at the seam and stains the face. The band of paste on the wall should look wet and even, not pooled.

Work in a room above 10C with no draught. A through-draught from an open window dries the leading edge of a strip before you have smoothed the trailing edge, and the strip shrinks unevenly. Keep doors shut and any heating low and steady for the first twenty-four hours after hanging.

If a seam opens slightly as it dries, do not pull the strip off. Lift the edge with a fine spatula, run a thin line of overlap-and-repair adhesive underneath, press it back, and roll it gently. A seam that has fully dried open by more than a millimetre usually cannot be closed and is better cut out and patched with a matched offcut, which is the reason for the sealed spare roll.

A worked cost and waste example

Take a chimney breast wall 1.6m wide and 2.4m high, the most common feature-wall shape in a UK living room. Width 1.6m divided by the 52cm roll width gives 3.08, so four drops once you account for the part-width at the end.

Each drop is 2.4m plus 68.5cm repeat allowance plus 10cm trim, call it 3.18m of roll consumed per drop because the pattern repeat forces you to start each new cut at the next full repeat point. Four drops at roughly 3.18m is 12.7m of paper. A single 10m roll cannot cover it, so two rolls are needed, leaving about 7m spare. That spare is not waste in the planning sense, it is the patch stock and the overage every straight-match paper demands.

At a typical retail price in the region of 100 to 130 pounds per roll for this collection, the paper alone runs 200 to 260 pounds for a wall under two metres wide. The adhesive, a 5kg tub of ready-mixed paste, adds around 15 pounds and covers the job with plenty left. Anyone quoting a single roll for a feature wall this size has not allowed for the repeat, and the second roll is the difference between a finished wall and a stalled one.

When the wall is the backdrop, not the whole story

A Hummingbirds wall is loud, so the objects in front of it have to be quiet and few. A single floating shelf in a plain finish reads better against this print than a crowded gallery arrangement that competes with the birds for the eye.

If you do mount a shelf, set the bracket fixings into plasterboard with the right anchor, because a feature wall is exactly where a sagging shelf shows. Mark the fixing points through the paper with a fine bradawl, not a thick pencil cross that bleeds paste-softened fibres. The paper is freshly hung and still slightly soft for a few days, so wait until it has fully cured before drilling, or the bit will tear the face on entry.

What the roll label and most installation notes never settle is the question of light. Hummingbirds shifts noticeably between the cool grey-blue grounds and the darker ink grounds depending on whether the room takes morning or evening sun, and the same batch can look like two different papers on facing walls. Which way does your feature wall face, and have you held a full drop against it at the hour you actually use the room?