Removable Wall Decals For Adults

Make your rental accommodation more appealing or add inspiring décor to your home with removable wall decals.

Removable wall decals (also known as removable wall stickers) come in many attractive designs which can enhance your home. They are not just for children’s rooms! If you are looking for an affordable home decorating idea that’s portable and matches all of your furniture, curtains and paint colour, you’ll find removable wall decals are very simple to use and you can choose from a huge range of designs.

Even if your walls are a drab colour and look boring, wall decals can spice them up and add a personal touch. Your landlord will never know, as you can easily take them down and hide them during inspections. And, if you are a homeowner and are planning on selling your house later, you can remove the decals and voila! your painted walls are still in good condition.

Many wall decals can be customised both in size and design. You can get borders, appliqués, stickers and wall murals. You can even get your own photos blown up to a large size and made into wall stickers and removable wall decals – check out removable wall decal manufacturers who specialise in customised wall stickers for advice on these.

Designs for adult bedrooms and loungerooms might include natural, arty, sports, mystical, whimsical, floral, geometrical, cars and many other themes. A good way to choose a design is to look at the existing paint, furniture, carpet and curtain colours. What colours will enhance or work in harmony with these? Is there a common colour palette that can work with your elements

Do not despair if your carpet is brown and your walls are white and your loungeroom has orange curtains. There will be something that helps – for example, you could try adding an olive coloured tree design or a combination of red/brown/green/blue to help break up the idea of old colour schemes used decades ago.

New houses and newly painted houses can also benefit greatly from removable wall decals. A very simple one-colour design can have a huge impact with modern-looking furniture and will match almost any rug or curtain colours. Choose themes for the room which are classical, bold or whimsical to add distinct statements to the room. Try natural colours like olive, cocoa, chocolate, greys, wheats or pale blues. For bolder statements, try white, black, red, orange or electric blue.

If you are using wall decals to dress up a huge, empty space, it’s pretty obvious where to apply one (ie, the huge, empty space). However, some thought could be given to which wall is the first one seen when someone enters the room, or which wall gets the most light and is able to show off the wall decal to its best advantage. If you have a striking piece of furniture and a bare wall next to it, a removable wall decal could be just the thing to add emphasis to your room design.

For cluttered spaces, you might like to clean up a little (just kidding)! You’ll often find hallways are bare, blank canvases that can use more excitement with wall decals, or that entranceways or sunrooms would look good with decoration. Don’t use removable wall decals in the toilet or bathroom unless it’s well ventilated though – they can become germy or be exposed to mould and bacteria growth over a long period of time.

Some adhesive (but not removable) wall decal packs come with “practise decals”, which allow you to have a go at applying them before doing the real thing. Removable wall decals do not usually have “practise decals” and are repositionable (you can move them around if they’re not positioned right) They are also portable (they can move house with you). Each manufacturer has different instructions supplied with the products and many are installed in the same way.

Generic instructions include ensuring the surface to which the decal will be applied is clean, smooth and dry. You can use a slightly damp cloth to remove any dust. For older surfaces, wash the wall gently with sugar soap and rinse with cold water. After any washing or wiping, allow the wall to dry thoroughly before applying the wall decal. Even if your wall appears clean, washing the wall can help the removable wall decal to adhere properly. Make sure that wall decals are flat before putting them on, otherwise they won’t stick to the wall well.

If you have Teflon, silicone or other similar additives in “wash and wear” paint, you might have trouble getting wall decals to stick to the surface as these paints have been designed to deter adhesives and attachments. Polyurethaned floors can create fumes which will affect the adhesives in wall decals. You might notice that hot weather can soften adhesive and cause removable wall decals to fall down, so cool off hot rooms in summer as much as possible.

Note: Freshly painted walls need to dry for at least three weeks before applying removable wall decals. Repainted walls and extra coatings of paint might mean waiting for six weeks for it to dry properly. Paint will dry quicker in summer than winter, so be aware that it’s better to be safe than sorry when waiting to apply wall decals. Whoever thought watching paint dry could be something you anticipate?

Peel the sticker from its backing. Position where you want the wall decal to be and press it on to the wall. Use a soft cloth to press the edges and middle down firmly.

For borders, rule a straight line lightly with a lead pencil at the base of where you want the decal to sit on the wall. Peel a bit of the backing from the border and position it against the line drawn. Press the border onto the surface and pull off the rest of the backing, applying the rest of the border slowly to the wall. Use a soft cloth to press the whole border decal on firmly.

To join more decals or rolls of decals, overlap the border edges before you unpeel them. Place the border edges on a hard cutting surface and choose a busy pattern where a join will not be noticed as much. Place a metal ruler across both decals vertically and use a sharp cutting knife to slice through both decals. Apply the decals to the wall, taking care to unpeel the border decals slowly and match up the joining edges perfectly. Rub out any visible lines you have drawn in lead pencil gently with an eraser.

Most removable wall decal manufacturers are happy to assist with any problems in getting decals to stick properly. Try contacting the manufacturer for assistance if you can’t get wall decals to stick.

To remove a removable wall decal or to reposition one, peel it slowly from the surface of the wall. Peeling too fast will tear the decal and possibly damage paint, so be gentle. Clean a new patch of wall, allow it to dry and then apply the wall decal in its new position. If you have trouble removing a wall decal, trying warming it with a hair dryer to help it peel off.

If the removable wall decal is very old, then you might need to clean the underside of the decal as well as the new patch of wall and allow both to dry. Sometimes kids can remove wall decals and dirty the underside, preventing the wall decal from sticking again properly. Clean the underside of the wall decal and the wall itself to fix this.

Thank you for reading my hub about removable wall decals. It’s really exciting that wall decals, once the domain of children’s bedrooms, can now be used to improve home décor in rental accommodation as well as private houses. What was once done with wallpaper can now be done a lot easier and cheaper, with no messes to clean up. I look forward to any feedback on how you improved your home décor using wall decals.

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