Compare liquid and ordinary wallpaper

Our experts in the field of con­struc­tion and repair exam­ined the fea­tures and prop­er­ties of two types of wall­pa­per — ordi­nary and liq­uid, made a com­par­a­tive analy­sis of their advan­tages and dis­ad­van­tages, which will help you make an informed choice in favor of one or anoth­er mate­r­i­al.

Ordinary wallpapers

Man­u­fac­tur­ers pro­duce many vari­eties of wall­pa­per, which can be divid­ed into the fol­low­ing cat­e­gories depend­ing on the mate­ri­als from which they are made:

1. paper;

2. non-woven;

3. vinyl;

4. tex­tile;

5. fiber­glass;

6. coat­ed with nat­ur­al mate­ri­als;

7. met­al.

paper wallpaper

The most pop­u­lar type of this roll fin­ish­ing mate­r­i­al. They are divid­ed into three types: sim­plex, duplex and for col­or­ing.

Sim­plex wall­pa­pers are made from a sin­gle lay­er of paper can­vas with col­or­ing and apply­ing a sim­ple pat­tern in a typo­graph­i­cal way.

Duplex — are made from two or three inter­con­nect­ed lay­ers of paper, which are coat­ed with spe­cial com­pounds to impart mois­ture resis­tance and col­or sta­bil­i­ty. Then on one side with the help of rota­tion­al print­ing and using sten­cils, thick­ly rubbed ink is applied. The sur­face of the web mate­r­i­al can be smooth or embossed, which is obtained by extrud­ing a vari­ety of pat­terns when rolling paper through rollers with an embossed sur­face.

Roll mate­ri­als for paint­ing con­sist of two or three lay­ers of paper, which is impreg­nat­ed with a spe­cial water-repel­lent com­pound, the sur­face is white and may have an embossed or coarse-fiber struc­ture. An embossed sur­face is obtained by squeez­ing out var­i­ous pat­terns; coarse-fiber wall­pa­per for col­or­ing is made with the addi­tion of wood chips to the com­po­si­tion. Mate­ri­als for paint­ing can be paint­ed and repaint­ed many times — from 5 to 15 times.

non-woven

They are made on the basis of inter­lin­ing — a non-woven mate­r­i­al, which is a mix­ture of nat­ur­al and syn­thet­ic fibers. They can have a smooth or tex­tured sur­face, which is giv­en to this roll mate­r­i­al using hot stamp­ing. A vari­ety of non-woven wall­pa­per can be used for paint­ing.

Vinyl

They con­sist of two lay­ers — the bot­tom lay­er is non-woven or paper, on which a thin lay­er of PVC (polyvinyl chlo­ride) is applied, after which emboss­ing or draw­ing is done. The bot­tom lay­er is impreg­nat­ed with a spe­cial com­po­si­tion that pro­tects against the appear­ance of fun­gus or mold.

A vari­ety of vinyl mate­ri­als includes silk screen print­ing, where a lay­er of vinyl with silk threads is applied to the bot­tom lay­er of paper, imi­tat­ing pure silk fab­ric.

Oth­er vari­eties of this type of mate­r­i­al are foamed vinyl, embossed wall­pa­pers imi­tat­ing nat­ur­al stone or ceram­ic tiles, and poly­p­lene.

Textile

They are a paper base on which fibers of arti­fi­cial or nat­ur­al fab­rics are glued — cot­ton, linen, silk, jute, vis­cose, etc.

fiberglass

They are made on the basis of fiber­glass, which is pro­duced from nat­ur­al raw mate­ri­als, includ­ing quartz sand, dolomite, soda and lime. They can con­sist of one lay­er or two lay­ers — in this case, the fiber­glass is glued to the paper back­ing. An emboss­ing is made on the sur­face, giv­ing a dif­fer­ent kind of relief tex­ture in the form of rhom­bus­es, mat­ting, Christ­mas trees, etc. Designed for sub­se­quent paint­ing with water-based or latex paints, and can with­stand more than 10 repaint­ing pro­ce­dures.

Wallpaper coated with natural materials

With a paper base on which a thin lay­er of nat­ur­al mate­ri­als is glued, such as cork, bam­boo, cane, nat­ur­al wood veneer. They are used to cre­ate orig­i­nal inte­ri­ors in the style of “coun­try”, “ori­en­tal”, “eth­nic”, etc.

metal

They con­sist of a paper base on which a thin lay­er of met­al foil is glued, then draw­ings or emboss­ing are applied. They are vapor-tight, so they should only be applied to sur­faces that absorb mois­ture well.

The liquid wallpaper

They are a dry mix­ture, which is dilut­ed with water before use and then applied to the walls like plas­ter using spat­u­las, graters, rollers or spe­cial pis­tols. The mix­ture may include: cot­ton and cel­lu­lose fibers; waste from the wood­work­ing and tex­tile indus­tries; waste paper; dec­o­ra­tive ele­ments — acrylic dyes, silk fibers, sparkles, min­er­al chips, etc.; adhe­sive com­po­si­tions; anti­sep­tics. Liq­uid wall­pa­per is also pro­duced in the form of ready-to-use solu­tions sold in buck­ets.

Ready-to-use dry mix­es or mor­tars are suit­able for use by unskilled per­form­ers. For pro­fes­sion­al work, mix­tures of white col­or and with­out dec­o­ra­tive ele­ments are pro­duced, used in the cre­ation of exclu­sive design projects for inte­ri­or design. In this case, before use, the nec­es­sary dyes and dec­o­ra­tive ele­ments are added to the white base in accor­dance with the deci­sions of the design project.

They are divid­ed into sev­er­al main types: silk — with a pre­dom­i­nance of silk fibers; cel­lu­lose; cot­ton; mixed type — with a com­bi­na­tion of fibers of oth­er types, silk-cel­lu­lose or silk-cot­ton.

Table of advantages and disadvantages

The main differences between materials

The main dif­fer­ences between the mate­ri­als are as fol­lows:

1. in the method of appli­ca­tion;

2. main­tain­abil­i­ty — liq­uid wall­pa­per is eas­i­er to repair, if nec­es­sary, replaced with­out dam­age to the appear­ance of indi­vid­ual dam­aged areas;

3. with the help of liq­uid wall­pa­per, you can fin­ish sur­faces of any shape in the most inac­ces­si­ble places, unlike rolled mate­ri­als;

4. liq­uid wall­pa­per is elas­tic, unlike rolled mate­ri­als, which is impor­tant when the build­ing sags after fin­ish­ing work.

What is the similarity of materials

The sim­i­lar­i­ty of mate­ri­als is as fol­lows:

1. both types can be used to dec­o­rate rooms of the same func­tion­al pur­pose;

2. ease of fin­ish­ing work — both types of mate­ri­als can be used in work by unskilled per­form­ers;

3. a wide choice of fin­ish­ing of both mate­ri­als — col­ors, tex­tures.

Con­clu­sions: An unequiv­o­cal answer to the ques­tion: what is bet­ter — liq­uid or ordi­nary wall­pa­per can­not be giv­en, since there are many vari­eties of both mate­ri­als that have their own advan­tages and dis­ad­van­tages and are suit­able for use in dif­fer­ent con­di­tions. When choos­ing, the fol­low­ing cri­te­ria should be tak­en into account: the func­tion­al pur­pose of the room, the nature of the inte­ri­or design, the mode of oper­a­tion in terms of changes in humid­i­ty and tem­per­a­ture, and finan­cial capa­bil­i­ties.