I learned very early on that stripping wallpaper you don’t really need to strip is a good way of creating unnecessary work and expense. If the paper is firmly attached and in reasonable condition, painting over it is often a perfectly good option.
I can tell from the look on people’s faces when I say this in person that it raises an immediate concern. So let me be clear about what I mean.
I am not suggesting you leave old, ripped, stained, peeling wallpaper on the walls and hope nobody notices. That would look horrible and reflect badly on you as a landlord. What I’m talking about is wallpaper that is firmly attached and structurally sound, but grubby from years of normal occupation – handprints around the switches, a slight yellowing from a smoker, the general dinginess that builds up over years of people just living somewhere. That wallpaper isn’t damaged. It’s just dirty. And dirty and damaged are two very different things, with two very different solutions.
What Actually Happens When You Start Stripping
You start stripping, because you think you should, assuming it’ll be straightforward. Then you discover there isn’t one layer. There are two. Or three. Or, in one memorable case of mine, what felt like five layers of progressively older, progressively more determined wallpaper going back decades. Each layer has to come off separately, because they’ve been stuck to each other rather than to the wall, and the bottom layer has practically become part of the plaster.
By the time you’ve worked through all of that, you’ve used up time you hadn’t allowed for, and you still can’t decorate – you’ve got to re-skim or re-paper first. So you’ve added a job that didn’t need to exist. If you’re paying a decorator by the day, it adds a surprising amount to the bill. Either way, you’ve done a lot of work to end up roughly where you started.
There’s also a hidden risk. In older properties – which most buy-to-let terraced houses are – the plaster underneath can be fragile, holding together perfectly well as long as nobody disturbs it. Start stripping, and chunks start coming away. What looked like a straightforward decorating job is now a plastering job, with all the time and cost that involves, plus waiting for new plaster to dry before anything else can happen. I’ve seen projects add a month to their timeline because of exactly this.
The Solution
If the wallpaper is sound but grubby, wash it down with sugar soap. It’s a heavy-duty cleaning solution that cuts through grease, grime and nicotine staining. Dilute it, wash down the walls, let them dry thoroughly, then paint over them. Done properly, the result looks genuinely fresh and clean – the paint goes on evenly, and nobody looking at the finished room would know or care whether the paper had been stripped. You’ve also avoided the plaster risk entirely, because you haven’t disturbed anything underneath.
Obviously there are times when stripping is the right call. If the paper is torn, peeling or bubbling, it has to come off. If there’s active damp behind it, you need to see what you’re dealing with. And if the paper is heavily textured – woodchip being the obvious one – and you want a smooth finish, paint won’t flatten it. But even then I’d check my own motivation first. Textured paper isn’t always the disaster people assume. The test is simple: will someone walk in and say “ugh, what horrid wallpaper”, or will they walk in and think “nice room”? If it’s the latter, leave it.
The Broader Point
This is really just one example of a principle I come back to constantly: don’t do work you don’t need to do. Every unnecessary job costs you time, money, or both, and on a project where your budget and timeline are fixed before you even buy the property, unnecessary work directly eats into your profit. Before you start any job, it’s worth asking: is this actually necessary, or does it just feel like the right thing to do? Quite often, on reflection, it isn’t necessary at all.
Here’s to successful property renovating.
Peter Jones (ex) Chartered Surveyor, author and property investor
www.thepropertyteacher.co.uk
By the way, I’ve completely rewritten and updated my course for 2026, The Successful Property Renovator’s Workshop – a comprehensive guide to renovating properties properly and profitably, based on my own experience across well over 150 projects over thirty years.
For more details please go to: https://thepropertyteacher.co.uk/the-successful-property-renovators-workshop/
