Scenic Wallpaper was hired for the restoration of a vintage de Gournay silk wallpaper at a home in Westchester County, NY. The paper was installed by another wallpaper hanger 30 years ago and was not installed using our usual removable method. This made some of the repairs and restoration more difficult to achieve, but we were up for the challenge.

The wallpaper was installed on two floors of the entry hallway, including the curved staircase. To access the upper portions of the wallpaper panels, a custom scaffold had to be installed in the space.

After cleaning the paper, there were areas that had lifted and needed to be resecured. There were marks on the paper that couldn’t be removed and needed to be disguised with added artwork. There were also switch plates and holes from previously installed sconces in the middle of certain panels that needed to be filled in with plaster, covered with paper and painted to match. Several new switch plates were installed and painted to match as well.

To cover or disguise the discoloration marks on the background, we often added more leaves and branches and/or butterflies to the scene.

The old switchplates, which had significantly chipped and faded, were updated with new plates, covered with matching silk, and in-painted to blend in with the wallpaper.

During renovations, the staircase in the home had been moved, so there was a blank area underneath the stairwell that needed wallpaper and artwork. Samples of the old wallpaper were sent to de Gournay, and reproduction wallpaper panels were created at their factory in China. Once the panels were ready, we installed the new wallpaper under the stairs, making sure that the artwork blended in and matched at the existing seam. We tweaked some of the branches to make them darker to match the pre-existing 30 year old wallpaper.