"Where's the Match?"

     Many wallcoverings have a printed pattern that repeats throughout the roll.  The vertical length of this pattern is called the repeat.  It can be less than an inch or more than five feet long.  This pattern is printed over and over on the entire length of your roll.

     The pattern may be designed to blend into itself so that it seems to flow down the length of the roll.  If the pattern is complicated, it may be hard to see how the seams should be aligned to get the pattern to match from one strip to the next.

     The kind of alignment needed to get the pattern to match at the seams is called random-match, straight-across-match, or drop-match.

Random-Match

     A random-match does not have any precise design or print that has to be matched up at the seams.  Sometimes called 'no-match', random matches can include grasscloth, stringcloth, mono-colored and textured vinyls, fabrics, such as burlap and linen, and even vertical striped wallcoverings.

     Stripes will usually have a repetitive pattern across the width of the strip, but their vertical alignment is just like a patternless product.  Without the effort of pattern matching you may find random matches to be easier to install.  You may also use less of a random-match since there is no waste because of pattern matching requirements.

     Random-match vinyls, which are usually a single color on a general texture background, may require a special hanging technique.  This technique is called 'reversing strips'.

     During the printing process vinyl will often take color stronger on one side of the strip than the other.  You can reduce the impact of this discoloration by reversing the direction of every other strip from top to bottom.

     To fully understand this, imagine that the left side of your roll is light blue and the right side is dark blue.  If you install without reversing every other strip, you would be putting light and dark edges together and they would definitely stand out.

     Reversing every other strip from top to bottom puts the dark edges together and the light edges together.  This eliminates the 'shading effect' that occurs with some random-match vinyls.

     Usually the light-to-dark-side shading is so slight that the only time you can see it is after you put two or three strips up.  When the strips are reversed top to bottom and the dark and light edges are butted together, the color change becomes nearly invisible.  The walls appear as they should, one color.


Straight Across Match

     A straight-across-match pattern is one that matches in a horizontal line across the strip.  Most square patterns, like checks and plaids, are necessarily straight-across-matches.  It is a simple process to cut two strips at the same place in the pattern, align the seams and find the match.

     If your paper is not marked straight-across-match on the back side, open two rolls and line up the seams until you find the match.  Now lay a yardstick or straight edge horizontally across the two strips.  If you see the same parts of the pattern at the left of the strips and at the right of the strips, then you have a straight-across-match (with a straight-across-match, you could draw a horizontal line around your room and that line would go through the same part of your pattern on every strip).

Drop Matches

     The nice thing about straight-across matches is the ease of finding that part of the pattern that you need to cut through each time you are ready to install a strip.  Once you have chosen that part of the pattern that you want to go near your ceiling line, it is a simple process to cut just above it on each strip as you go around the room.

     It is just as easy to find your match points for a drop-match pattern.  But with a drop-match pattern you will need to remember two different places in the pattern to make your cuts.  That is because the right and left sides of the strips do not match each other like they do in a straight-across match.

     A drop-match is called a drop match because the match for the second, or next, strip drops halfway down the length of the pattern repeat.  It does not matter if the repeat is six inches or six feet.  To match the next strip you will always need to lift it up half the length of the pattern repeat.

     This will be easy to see if you take two rolls of a drop-match and unroll them and align the seams until you get a match.  Now, if you lay a straight edge horizontally across the two strips, what you will see is that there is a different part of the pattern on the left side of the second strip than is on the left side of the first strip.

     You will also notice that on this horizontal line the far left of the first strip and the far right of the second strip are correct matches for each other.

     This is what you need to remember about drop matches.  It takes two strips of a drop-match pattern to make one (two-strip) panel of a straight-across match.  Think of hanging your drop match pattern in pairs of strips and you will find it to be just like hanging a straight-across match.

     You can make the job of cutting your strips easier if you will use one roll for cutting the even strips and another for cutting the odd, or alternative strips.  Mark each one (with a pencil on the back) according to where you cut on the pattern as either 'A' or 'B'.

     You should also mark off your walls in strip widths with light pencil marks.  Starting with the first strip, go around the room marking a sequence of A-B-A-B-A-B.  This will show you not only how many strips you will need, but where they are to be placed and what length you will need for each strip.  This is what paperhangers call "engineering" the room.