Looking for a creative wall covering for your home or apartment? Concerned about your renter’s deposit, the cost, and/or the toxicity of the materials you use? If you have these or any other concerns, you may be able to solve these issues by using recycled materials to cover your walls.
Here are some tips, ideas, and “how tos” for using recycled materials for your walls.
1. Paper
There are really so many paper options out there that only a few can be covered here. Think about all the scrap paper in your life, and then envision it positioned in a cool pattern on your walls! Here are some ideas and suggestions for other paper sources.
* Cards – From holiday cards to postcards, you can cover your walls with various designs made from these colorful items. You can just cover the wall from one side to the other, or arrange the cards to form a spiral, flowers, or other shapes. Don’t forget business cards. As long as you are getting creative, why not use those subscription cards that come on the inside of magazines?
* Newspapers – Once the insulation of choice for the impoverished, newspapers offer a modern look when applied to a wall. You can use color photos, comics, headlines, or the whole paper.
* Paper photos – In this day and age of digital photography, many of us have old paper photos sitting in boxes. Arranging them in photo albums is becoming a lost art! But the new art is putting them on the wall. If you don’t want to put them directly on the wall, you can apply them to large pieces of plywood or poster board and hang them on the wall. Then, if you move, you can take them with you.
* Magazines – One of the fun things about using magazine pages to cover your walls is that magazines reflect your personal interests and tastes. Kitchens can benefit from magazines about food and cooking; living room walls might look good with some pages from a home decorating magazine. Dens and bathrooms can sport pictures of nature, the outdoors, or sports.
* Paper bags – Using adhesive and paint, you can recycle paper bags into a wall covering with a leather-like look.
* Books – Old encyclopedias, phone books, and any other book you no longer use could provide a very interesting wall cover.
* Maps – Road maps are attractive and interesting, and would lend a well-traveled, adventurous look to a rec room or reading room.
2. Cloth
Covering your walls with cloth is a time-honored method of room decorating. You can recycle old bedsheets, shower curtains, and fabric scraps this way. You can adhere the cloth directly to the wall using spray starch, or make a panel by covering plywood with fabric and hanging it on the wall.
