You should look and see if your walls are in (or you can get them in) relatively good order, if the corners are in really bad order and are way out of plumb/ very un-level (particularly the external corners on the older property’s with the rounded wooden edge), then finish (pre-finished patterned) patterned pre finished wallpaper may not be the best way to decorate this room, at least not without putting in new corner beads and re-plastering first, as this will make life really difficult when you come to butting the straight edges and the pattern is likely to “run out”

Also if this is your first paper hanging job or are not that confident you may want to consider using a pre finished paper with no pattern for you to match, or at least not a “busy” complicated one. Ensure you have sufficient rolls for the job and all batch numbers are all the same, (this doesn’t normally matter with paintable papers such as lining paper and anaglypta paper ) when buying paper we recommend asking your supplier what the returns policy is, if you can get a refund on all unused, unopened rolls it makes sense to over order as insurance, but obviously if you cannot return any unused rolls it makes sense to try and be as accurate in your calculations as possible, while making sure you have sufficient rolls.

Our painters and decorators say to make sure any existing paper (apart from very sound, well bonded lining paper which is not overlapping, which can act as a base) has been stripped off and your surfaces are sound and in good repair, if not you need to follow the surface preparation tutorial on this site. And you also need to make sure that all of your painting in the room to be papered is finished first, papering hanging is the last job (unless you are using paper you are going to paint).