While my loft had a lot of character, my new apartment is a little more on the cookie cutter side of things – I’m stuck with a greyish beigeish wall color and popcorn ceilings at the moment, and I must confess, I’m going a little insane. Since I’m only planning on living in this space for a year, I’ve been forced to get creative with my decorating solutions to make my apartment still feel like “me” without painting every single wall or making any structural changes.

Enter removable wallpaper. Cue angels singing and me doing a giddy happy dance. I was a bit intimidated by both price and anticipated level of effort when I first started researching removable wallpaper options – it seemed like it was going to be way more expensive than I wanted to commit to for an one year stay and also looked like a project that was bound to make me go totally crazy. But I am proud to report that A. it wasn’t actually that difficult to apply and B. I found an option at Target that lowered the total cost of the project to $75 (WIN! Urban Outfitters has some great patterns as well).

Some lessons in removable wallpaper:

1. Measure the dimensions of your wall and then use a handy dandy wallaper calculator to determine how many rolls you’ll need to cover your space
2. Have an Xacto Knife on hand to cut around any obstacles like outlets or moulding (for outlets, I found it was easiest to remove the cover, apply the wallpaper over the outlet and then cut out the inside with the Xacto knife – then, when you re-apply the cover everything will look perfect!)
3. Patterns are not as scary as you think! Yes, matching up the pattern as you apply new strips is important but the pattern also helps hide any imperfections

Overall I’m thrilled with the results and love the impact that the bold pattern + metallic gold finish has made in my living room. Once you get into a groove, application goes by pretty quickly and I’d say the #1 most important thing to do as you go along is make sure there are no gaps in your wallpaper strips and that the pattern matches as close as possible.

Have you ever dabbled in removable wallpaper? Any favorite resources or tips? Do you have any statement walls in your home?