Having My Walls Draped

Advantages

• There are many advantages to draping your walls with fabric. For the apartment dweller who isn't allowed to repaint the walls, fabric draping offers a viable alternative to painting. It provides both color and texture to the space, but won't go against your rental agreement. Fabric draping also allows you to cover large areas of your wall, but gives your wall a softer look than painting or stenciling provides. Finally, draping your walls doesn't come with the same mess as paint does.

Styles

• When decorating your walls with fabric draping, choose your fabric after you've chosen the decorating style for the room. This gives you an idea of not only what color of fabric you should select, but it also helps you choose the right patterns. For example, if you've decorated your room in a Chinese/Asian style, a fabric that's Chinese red with a print of bamboo branches would fit the room's theme.

Wallpaper Alternative

• Draping fabric on the wall can mean not only hanging material on your wall space so that it resembles a set of curtained windows, but also using material to cover the wall in the same manner as you do wallpaper. Before you start, determine which walls you intend to cover with your fabric wallpaper and how much of the wall you'll cover; then measure your fabric accordingly. To hang up the fabric, cut it to fit your walls and hang it up with push pins to keep it in place momentarily. Then smooth out any wrinkles with your hands or a large, wide brush. Finally, if money is a concern, purchase your fabric on sale or look in the newspaper for fabric store closeouts, choosing a fabric that matches your decorating style.

Considerations

• Although it's possible to hang artwork and prints on walls that have been covered with fabric, you'll want to be mindful of the fabric you select if you plan on doing this. Thinner fabrics such as silk, satiny or thin cottons can tear when you pound a nail into them. If you're going to be driving nails into your fabric covered walls to hang up your art pieces, choose a fabric that's thick and heavy as your wall cover. If you can easily see through the fabric with which you're draping your walls, then it's probably not thick enough for this purpose.