Can you paint over wallpaper?

Painting over wallpaper is something that people do to save time when they want to improve their house.
It can be done and most of the times comes out fine.

There are instances though that you have to remove the wallpaper in order to achieve a smooth finish. If the wallpaper has a heavy texture then you’re most likely better off to remove it.

When you paint over heavy texture wallpaper there are two disadvantages, 1 the texture will show through, which is fine most of the times, 2 where the wallpaper is damaged you will need to patch and the patched area will look different after you paint.

If the wallpaper is smooth (no texture) you can patch without worrying that the patched area will come out different than the rest of the wall.

How to paint over wallpaper?

Today’s question comes from Aaren. Aaren asks:

Hi hope you can help! My daughter’s room will not stop smelling. In fact, I challenged Olympic Paint and Lowe’s – going back and forth until we settled. KILZ and another coat of paint reproduced the original smell! Olympic even paid a professional to do all that work for us. The second coat of Premium One water based latex interior paint still smells. We have 2 air purifiers and had our windows opens for a week while painting and for 12 days afterward. …. As of today however we are dealing with a smell from Friday. It’s awful and I’m afraid to let my daughter sleep in there (although she has for two nights). WHAT can I do to make it go away. The room seems like it’s cursed. No other room in our house ever smelled like this… Please help with ideas of what to do. How long is this supposed to last. The smell is like a sweet, clay smell. It doesn’t really smell like paint at all. We even crawled into the attic to check for smell and it wasn’t present. We tried sprays, onions, vinegar, steam cleaning. Everything. Your advice would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks. Aaren

To be honest I personally have never experienced prolonged smelling after painting a room. Usually something like that might happen if there is excessive moisture which makes the paint dry slower and may contribute to the paint smelling. To try to get rid of the smell I would put a container with some coffee in it. If it doesn’t remove the smell at least will enhance the air a bit.